Digital Storytelling

Everyone has a story to tell, whether or not they have the means to be heard is something else entirely. A tall tale or a true account can capture an audience and keeping the audience engaged is crucial. Rather than presenting a slide show of rehashed names, dates, and events, digital storytelling is an excellent route to engage audiences and the creators with the subject matter.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

If Higher Order Thinking Skills really get you going (and of course your administration), students that manipulate text, images, and their own creativity coupled with fact (or even fiction) come away with a deeper comprehension of the course material and that's just the final product. The process of making said digital story requires: teamwork, content knowledge, creativity, writing, editing, and the manipulation of 21st Century technologies, i.e, iMovie, YouTube, social media, Google products. When creating digital stories and other multimedia projects, just like a piece of creative fiction or an extensive research paper, students need to know that every word, every image, every sound, transition, and element MATTER. Instruct students to become directors, writers, and actors so that every image tells the audience a story; so that every line adds weight to the whole; so that every emotion and intonation can change the entirety of it all. These projects take time, but the knowledge, experience, and creativity far out weigh the time.

Check out this digital story as an example for digital storytelling. It explores an alternate perspective on the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, February 14th, 1929 during the peak of the U.S. Prohibition.

Texting, Classrooms, and Code-Switching

It’s hard to ignore the social phenomenon and pitfalls born from cellular phones. More and more we see people with their heads held low, fixated on their mobile phone: checking the weather, surfing the internet, or answering a text message. Now, perhaps we’re not so fond of the social ramifications of constant connection to the world wide web. After all, 23% of driving accidents in 2011 involved the use of a cell phone.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Naturally cellular phones (and most technology) get a bad reputation and most educators are reluctant to have that type of technology in the classroom. Texting is a misspelled, over-abbreviated, meaningless language that is destroying students’ abilities to read and write in their respective languages, right? WRONG. 

According to David Crystal, a professor linguistics at the University of Wales, texting gives students more opportunities to use language, but not only that, students are aware of when it is appropriate to use that type of language. Check out this video about his theory on cell phone use and the English language. 

There are a few things that we can learn from this as teachers:

1) Students need more opportunities to use “academic” writing

2) Student’s need to be taught how to code-switch

If our students are taught to recognize when and where to use a certain type of language, that is, how to code-switch, problems with literacy, spelling, and even comprehension should dissipate.

Secondly, as Crystal mentions, the more practice with one type of language the better one will utilize and interact in that language. If teachers are concerned about writing having authentic writing experiences is the best way to teach “good” writing. What technologies can we use to facilitate "good" writing? 

Get Better

Let’s allow our students to get better. Let’s really build a foundation of knowledge and skills for our students so that they can take over one day when we’re all gone. 

How do we do this as teachers (or parents, politicians, leaders, peers)?

Options. We need to give our students options for their futures; we need to let them know their opportunities in this world are infinite, not limited to a four-year college, diploma, and a 40 hour a week job with nice car and home in the 21st century. And therein lies the solution or perhaps the problem.

The 21st century. We have access to infinite information at the push and click of a few buttons, but yet students still are exploring only a small of that technology: social media.

It is sad that through social media people are bombarded with EVEN MORE advertisements and images contrary to reality. Pics of models that are unreasonably thin, cologne commercials that guarantee late nights with a woman, diets that shed fat, and the list goes on and on. 

So using this medium for its own sake but because it can show students’ learning in novel ways is crucial. Creating tumblr blogs for classroom discussion, news, research, and assignments is an excellent way to model smart learning and independent learning. 

The beauty of this access to information is astounding, which means ignorance is no longer an excuse. If you can’t afford access to the internet or have a computer your public library has got you covered. Don’t have a car to get there? Public transportation almost always stops at or at least near libraries. Don’t have the time? Libraries open early and close late, especially in college towns. 

I am so drawn to “Get Better” because it’s smart. 

"You can build your time better when you find a passion. The Internet and Public Services gives free education. So it really ain’t a case of rich or poor, it’s a case of self-motivation and nothing more." 

Courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: “Your actions speak so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” It takes not only smart teaching to change the lives of our students, but the action to back it up. Action from teachers, parents, politicians, everyone. 

A Starting Point

Every single story that has ever been told has a beginning, whether or not there is an ending is up to the author. The beginning for this tale is crucial for those circled around on the floor in front of the fireplace; they lean in close to hear the story’s first few lines:

What is the purpose of Education?

Even as a student I know that the purpose of education in the United States is dramatically shifting from its founding core ideals to the numbers, statistics, and pushup tests of the Common Core and No Child Left Behind. Unfortunately for all of those elaborately designed and well-intentioned assessments, which undoubtedly are created for the benefit of our students and teachers, there are only a limited amount of observations we can quantify and only so much time in our precious lives. 

To be frank: I am frightened by our Public Education system; we have seemed to move away from creating informed Citizens to cogs in the economic machine. Now before I am laid out on the guillotine by educators, politicians, parents, and reformers (and businesses) I must say that getting a job in this world is important, not in and of itself, but to create the means for an individual’s end. Having those skills are important, but neglecting the education of our students to be informed, determined, passionate, active Citizens in this Country is horrific! 

I am of the philosophy that states school is for creating citizens —- well-rounded, objective, self-educating, individualists who are aware of the processes for making changes within their city, state, country and government. Who know their goals and the means to accomplish them, as well as a thorough understanding of their American Liberties —- NOT employees, because that will come naturally, and employment shouldn’t be the end goal.

The Human Capital theory is not the answer, that is people are no longer people but assets, and yet our nation is bound and determined to utilize this absurd model. I’ll state it again: there are some things that cannot  be quantified. Art, the Soul, Literature, Love, Empathy, Cultures, People cannot and should be defined and understood through numbers, charts, and bar graphs.

So perhaps I am a little frightened by the daunting task of being a teacher, but I am out to change it, to fix it. Not all at once, maybe not even the entire nation, but as much as possible. 

Charles Bukowski’s poem “Roll the Dice" reads:

"if you’re going to try, go all the way. otherwise don’t even start."

Charles Bukowski
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

This is my motto. I will be unrelenting in my journey to educate America’s citizens, not in some sickly altruistic nature, but because I think these values are important, that they hold much more weight than any standardized test, and they create much more empathetic, individualized, logical, motivated Citizens. Because after all: We are the People. 

What are your thoughts on education in the United States?