Digital Story Brainstorming

Three Generations On the Road

Without “spilling the beans” on my upcoming digital story, I can tell you that I was inspired by prompt number one “Describe a positive childhood experience…”  At some point in my childhood, I don’t remember when (fourth grade perhaps), I traveled with my father and my grandfather from West Virginia to Arkansas to attend the funeral of my great-grandmother Alice Brown.  I couldn’t have imagined it then, but this trip was so important in two ways.  First, it gave me my first tangible connection to an older generation… one that was born in the 19^th Century, had children in the 1920s, raised them through the Great Depression and sent them to WWII.  I got to see their land, and feel their values.  Secondly, it began a Kerouacian fascination with driving across the United States (and other places in North America).  The hotels, the diners, the waitresses, the alligator farms, the lakes, the trains, towns, the roads, and the people became a part of my life.  Without a doubt this left in me the taste of American-style wandering, and an interest in the associated literature.  I can say without exaggeration that this spiraled into a deep connection to the Beat Generation, which ultimately inspired me to become and English teacher.

This digital story will not be as easy as it sounds.  Already, I am researching our road trip route, and I need to do some interviews with family members to see how old I was, what car we drove, and a few other details I can’t quite remember.  Also, I need to get into my mother’s photo album collection and scan a multitude of images.  It should be a nice drive down formative memory lane.  

Reading and Discussion #10

Response to Chapter 4 in "Critical Digital Literacies as Social Praxis" by Avila & Pandaya

1. How has social media changed reading and writing processes in the digital age?

Where in the past, critical thinking required a reader’s response to literature, the response was seldom published.  Now with social media, all readers can respond and have their comments posted next to news articles, blog entries, photos, videos, etc.  Reading has always been interactive, but now it is doubly so because all readers can make their ideas known and respond not only to the reading but to each other.

2. Explain "cosmopolitan practice" in relation to digital literacies and it means for learning in school.

From what I understand, this is an approach to interacting with the world through digital means.  Students, who are bound to become global citizens through use of worldwide social media, have to think beyond local values and interpretations of their work and communication and learn to consider how what they produce may be received by a variety of cultures.  This means educators need to equip students to think about the views and ethics of English speaking people around the world (or of whatever language they happen to be posting in).  The thing about this, is that we don’t always know the standards of other cultures and they do not know ours… so sometimes we will all learn the hard way.

3. How did the cosmopolitan conversation video challenge support critical media literacy?

I’m sorry.  I missed this in the unit somehow.

4. How does this quote from the text, "In this digital age, traditional content creation such as book reports, unit projects and essays, cannot be merely digitized and regulated to the end of the unit as capstone demonstrations of content mastery," make you think about how digital technologies should be used to support learning in school?

To me, this means that we can’t just use technology to produce traditional products and say that students are equipped for life in the 21^st century.  The technology has actually CHANGED the demands on students, and therefore the standards for what we teach them.  Digital technologies need to be integrated, and real communication with the outside world needs to be guided (as opposed to prohibited). 

5. How do the digital stories you watch this week support the concept of cosmopolitanism?

Many of the story examples we watched came from the South Pacific, but as a viewer I felt myself connecting to the ideas.  Although each product had a local flavor, I felt like the ethical standards they portrayed, mattered to a wide variety of audiences.  The “Are We Making Guam Ugly?” video was pretty universal. This shows that digital stories can adhere to cosmopolitan practices without abandoning their own unique attributes. 

6.  In a blog posting, copy and paste a quote from the text that have moved you in some way (i.e. surprised, confused, disagree, strongly agree) and in about 100-150 words state why you have selected the quote. Then find an article, video, podcast, blog posting, image related to what you have read and link to it or embed it in your Blog. Describe the resources and a brief explanation of how it is connected to the reading.

“Finally, we would not have learned about the youths’ sophisticated and layered meanings, nor their complex designing and concept-building processes, without a ‘listening’ orientation toward the youth (Shultz, 2003) itself a cosmopolitan practice (Avila & Pandaya, 2013).” 

The above quote moves me to remember that modeling cosmopolitan practices is a big part of teaching the attitudes students will need to take to creating products like digital stories.  It is not enough to tell them to be curious, be sensitive, do your research, and remember that anyone can see your work on the internet.  We have to do it ourselves by taking a ‘listening’ orientation.  This goes back to abandoning the old idea as the teacher as the keepers of knowledge, and transitioning to models of cosmopolitan behavior.  Since the Greek roots for “cosmopolitan” mean “at home in the world,” we must show students how to be at home in the world through digital media.

For more on this, I suggest people check out the following blog: “5 Insightful TED Talks on Social Media.”  I had seen the majority of these even before discovering this blog, but this is very nice collection.  It is a good resource to show students the importance of using social media well, and for having a cosmopolitan mindset when doing so.

References

Ávila, J. (2013). Critical digital literacies as social praxis: Intersections and challenges. New York: Peter Lang.

The Digital Story Telling Tutorial (Week 10 Activities)

The Digital Story Telling Tutorial

Element #1: Take a look at the two examples and see if you can identify the purpose behind each story. What is the point of view in each? Whose voice do you hear?

In the first example you hear two or three different children’s voices.  They appear to be students who have taken a field trip to a local salt mine and were now describing the steps of salt production in pictures and narration.

I believe story in the second example was created by the teacher to offer a video tour to his community, to parents of students, and (possibly) to the organizations who had given grants for a fish hatchery project.  The audience seems to be adults because most of the information was not narrated vocally, and many grade school children could not read the scrolling text quickly enough.  The point of view is from the head of the project.

Element #2: See if you can find a dramatic question in the examples for this section. Is the question resolved in each movie or are you left without a resolution?

The dramatic question in the first video is “Are we making Guam ugly?”  Here the question is only resolved when the video ask viewers to do their part to keep it beautiful.  I’d like to add the emotional appeal of the question may be heightened for the target audience.  I’m guessing it’s a song known in Guam (and may be about the beauty of Guam).

The dramatic question in the second story seems to be, “Where did our communities fishing trade come from?”  The question is resolved in the legend (as so many questions are).

Element #3: See if you can identify the emotional paradigms behind these stories.

The first example keeps us hooked by the suspense of wondering if the girl will harm herself.  We have to keep watching to see if she will.  Even though no character development has taken place, and we have no real reason to care about this character, the archetype of a depressed teen and our fear that this will happen to someone we do know, keeps us hooked.  Interestingly, this video was not telling us to help as much as it was telling depressed teens to let people help them.

The emotional content in the second video comes from the subject’s story that she had lost her grandparents before she cared enough to learn about their history and customs.  We stay hooked because we begin thinking that we should take action now learn from our aging loved ones.

Element #4: What impact that the voice plays on the overall effect of the story.

A voice of a narrator who was personally involved in the story adds authenticity to the information, and increases the dramatic effect because first-person narrators emphasize important elements when the tell the story.  In these examples, the voices personalize the story.

Element #5: What impact does the music have on the emotional content or purpose of the story?

Music drives emotion.  People have always known this, and the popularity of arts like opera, melodrama, musicals, television, and film prove that it still works.  Music can even push emotion where acting, narration, or story are lacking.  Even poorly constructed moments in a film or television show can be “saved” by the right choice of background music.  On the other side of that coin, it takes A LOT of talent and creativity to create an effective digital product that contains no music.  I couldn’t do it.

Element #6: Look at the examples in this section and consider the decisions the authors made about length of clips, types of transitions and sequence of events. Are you able (as a viewer) to fill in the missing pieces? Give an example?

Yes!  I completely agree with the instructions in this element.  So often beginning storytellers forget to ‘tell the most with the least.’  In the first example, the pictures tell us how crowded the girl’s life is, and where she goes when she needs some privacy.  None of that needed to be explained in the narration.  Also the story moved quickly because of the pace of the slide transitions.

Element #7: How does the narrator use their voice to pace the story? Give a specific example.

An urgent voice or an enthusiastic voice create a fast pace.  In the earthquake video the pace is urgent because of the content.  A relaxed pace would be inappropriate for this topic.  Hopefully, most storytellers will know intuitively to sync their voices to content, imagery, and music (but we have all seen local ads or amateur videos where that is not the case).

The Gift of Nonviolence by Leroy Moore

Analysis of "The Gift of Nonviolence"

Point of View: The narrator is an eloquent elderly gentleman recounting the day he first resisted against his abusive father.  Moore was sixteen at the time, and now, several decades later, he looks back in wisdom at the nonviolent means by which he put an end to a childhood of abuse.  Moore’s voice is calm, collected, warm, and insightful.  His words are few, but extremely well chosen.  At the end of the story we see that Moore’s point of view is that of a seasoned nonviolence advocate who has participated in nonviolence training in protest of nuclear weapon production.

Dramatic Question: The implied dramatic question is “Can nonviolent protests be effective against abuse and war?”  According to the patient sounding narrator the answer seems to be “yes.”  First he explains his nonviolent resistance against his father, who abused him through childhood with different weapons, including a rubber garden hose.  He then cites nuclear war as the epitome of violence, and alludes to the use of nonviolent tactics to help protest a weapons plant.

Emotional Content:  I related to the title of the story, because “nonviolence” can be an intriguing emotional word.  The narrator’s powerful opening statement was that he had put a stop to his father’s beating him with garden hose, on the last night of his junior year.  This kept me involved in the story, because I wanted to see how he’d stopped the abuse.  The narrator, however, continues beyond this incident to show how nonviolence was a part of things he’d accomplished later in life.  Very powerful.

Reading and Discussion Week #9

“The traditional hierarchy of adults as teachers and children as students also did not exist in the digital-storytelling learning environment because today’s youth are ‘digital natives’ who bring their own areas of expertise with new-media practices to the activity” (Avilia, 2013).

That young people are “digital natives” gives media literacy a special edge for  empowering youth at this point in history.  Children are digital natives while adults are not, but this will not always be true.  In a few decades all people in the developed world will be digital natives.  So for now the fact that young people have grown up with technology means that educators can use this to help students who are not a part of the dominant culture gain some ground against oppression.  In the future, when more people are digital natives, the difference will be between those who live where technology is accessible and those who do not.  This is why those charity programs that strive to give laptops and internet access to underprivileged youth or two students in developing countries seem to be a good thing.  Putting technology, training, and access to things like digital storytelling can empower people who couldn’t otherwise empower themselves (with money).

The TED Talk video that I have linked here, features a speech by Nicholas Negroponte who had the idea to bring computers to schools in developing nations.  He wanted to address education by “leveraging the children” (Negroponte, 2007).  According to him, children in developing nations catch on to technology just as quickly as children in the U.S.  Such programs seem to “teach a man to fish” by empowering students.

References

Ávila, J. (2013). Critical digital literacies as social praxis: Intersections and challenges. New York: Peter Lang.

Negroponte, N. (2007, Jun). "One laptop per child, two years on". Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_negroponte_on_one_laptop_per_child_two_years_on.html

A Response to Reel Works Digital Story "The Color of Love"

"The Color of Love" by Zakiyya Bowels

1.What do you like about the digital story?

I like that the young person who made this film chose a classic documentary Q & A format to explore the question, “Is interracial marriage accepted in American culture?”  She explored the history of the question, going back into the civil rights movement and examining a famous case (Virginia vs. Loving) in which a married couple was asked to leave the state of Virginia for 25 years because one partner was black and the other white.  She also talked to present-day married couples about discrimination they had faced.  Her digital story seemed informed by the structure of some recent documentary films.

2.What did you learn from the digital story?

I learned that as recently as 2009, a Justice of the Peace from Louisiana named Keith Bardwell made the news because he refused to marry two people on the grounds of skin color alone.  This news story was apparently what started Zakiyya Bowels’s journey to explore this question.

3.What surprised you about the digital story?

It surprised me that no one she interviewed (which must be post 2009) seemed aware that there is no scientific biological basis to race, and that race is only a social construct… mostly an American one.  The questions that were asked and answered presupposed that race truly exists, when in fact it does not.  Everyone in Zakiyya’s world, even her teacher, believed in the American dominant message that race is real.

4.How did the digital story provide an example of how digital storytelling can build self esteem, help young people voice an opposition to social problems,  or create an alternative to stereotypes of adolescents typically portrayed in mainstream media?

This story was a prime example of how young people can voice opposition.  The news caused the young filmmaker to ask a serious question.  She explored the history and the present-day opinion on her question.  They she expressed her opinion that there is no “color of love.”  She created a personal alternative to the stereotypes attached to “race” and marriage in the United States.  Her film really reminded me that mainstream media must still support that MYTH that race is real and that blacks are fundamentally different in some way.  The good news for Zakiyya is that science is on her side; there is no biological basis for race.  If more people can become informed about the past couple of decades of genetics, they might realize that its true there is no “color of love” and that debates about the ethics of “interracial” marriage are actually moot.

Media Lit PSA for Teachers

I created this PSA to reach out to teachers and help them consider why it is worth investing the time into incorporating elements of Media Literacy into the classroom.  For me, the most powerful statistics are from our text and from this Huff Post article which show that people spend MUCH more time with other media than they do with literature or any other book.  This tells me that if teachers are going to model critical thinking for their students, we can’t ignore internet, television, etc.  The facts  and quotes I used in the video were taken directly from our course text, and from Semali’s article because, after doing my research for the PSA, I felt that those were the most powerful and well stated.

I designed this PSA using a comic motif.  Comics and cartoons are something that reaches all ages.  With the current generation of adults, comics movies (The Dark Night Rises, Iron Man 3) and animated television (Family Guy, South Park, American Dad) are among the most popular forms of entertainment.  This is the generation that grew up on The Simpsons, so I knew that a funny comic book format would grab some attention.  I hand drew the images, uploaded them as images to Powerpoint, and put the whole thing together with music from a “chip tunes” band called Anamanaguchi.  I then saved the presentation as Windows Media Video.  Enjoy.

Reading and Discussion #7

Three ideas from the afterword:

After reading Margaret Hagood’s afterword in “Critical Digital Literacies as Social Praxis,” I plan to use three ideas in my PSA.  First, I will use the fact that in 2009 students spent 10:45 hours using media but only 38 minutes in print media (Hagood, 221).  This helps support the claim in my PSA that media (as opposed to literature) is the message students are already reading.  Secondly, since my PSA is geared toward teachers, I plan to use the idea that it’s up to teachers to bring this kind of instruction to the classroom.  Pedagogues can be encouraged to create standards, administrators can be encouraged to allow the instruction, but it’s the teachers who have to figure out what to do.  Finally, my PSA will humorously depict a teacher who helps set her students free by guiding them.  This is a reflection of the idea of the changing role of the educator spoken of by Hagood in the afterword.

Summary of what I learned from Critical Pedagogy and the Teaching of Reading for Social Action by Fernando Naiditch:

This article used the philosophy of Paulo Feire to create a focus on reading that I found quite moving.  Naiditch discusses Feire’s belief that in teaching literacy students must be made subjects, not objects, of their own learning, and Naiditch cites reading as a major part of this.  If students can be taught to look for meaning and assign meaning on their own, without having to find the meanings the teacher assigns to literature, they can be empowered to learn for themselves.  Naiditch goes on to list several practical skills and strategies that teachers can use to turn the process of reading into something empowering.

References

Ávila, J. (2013). Critical digital literacies as social praxis: Intersections and challenges. New York: Peter Lang.

Naiditch, F. (n.d.). Critical questions in education. Retrieved from http://education.missouristate.edu/assets/ele/Naidtichfinal.pdf