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“Digital Storytelling and Compositions:
the Perfect 21st Century Paper”
Write to Learn Presentation 2009
Gary Ryan: Christian
Brothers College High School
| In this workshop, you will learn how a National Writing Project teacher has used digital compositions to teach basic writing skills and, in the process, have changed the social and political dimensions of the learning environment. Mr. Ryan will show models of student multimedia compositions and discuss how each step in the drafting process reflects an increase in techno-literacy, problem solving, collaboration, while honoring traditional writing and reading skills. |
First Screen |
|
| "Certain materials are included under the fair
use exemption of the U.S. Copyright Law and have been prepared according
to the fair use guidelines and are restricted from further use."
|
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First Handout: Observation Chart--Two Digital Compositions
First Digital Composition: The Beats PowerPoint
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The research says that a digital reading and writing environment can positively influence literacy. Multimedia Composing presents a means of self-expression and provides support for development of reading and writing skills. Dynamic multimedia presentations allow students to feel their work could have a greater voice, which in turn encourages them |
| to put more effort into it…But is a PowerPoint presentations on The Crucible featuring the South Park devil really academic? ….Yes!to put more effort into it…But is a PowerPoint presentations on The Crucible featuring the South Park devil really academic? ….Yes! | |
The research says that a digital reading and writing environment can positively influence literacy. Multimedia Composing presents a means of self-expression and provides support for development of reading and writing skills. Dynamic multimedia presentations allow students to feel their work could have a greater voice, which in turn encourages them to put more effort into it…But is a PowerPoint presentations on The Crucible featuring the South Park devil really academic? ….Yes! |
|
| Multimedia presentations are changing the dynamics of the Rhetorical Triangle, but they are not changing the fundamentals of teaching composition. Traditionally we believe that: | |
| A: Teachers can best influence student writing by commenting on drafts in process rather than by marking finished products. |  |
B: Writing teachers introduce collaborative group assignments, to encourage students to experiment with ideas; think divergently; take risks; express opinions; speculate, hypothesize; and think metaphorically. |
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| C: Increasingly, as the future of literacy moves into the digital environment the text must to include graphics, sound, interactivity, and communication. | |
Seven Ideas: Two Assumptions |
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| 1. | Storytelling is an age-old way of transferring knowledge—instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective. |
| 2. | Digital storytelling involves combining narrative with digital content to create a short movie. |
| 3. | The resources available to incorporate into a digital story are virtually limitless, giving the storyteller enormous creative latitude. |
| 4. | However, no media is good for everything; each has costs and benefits in terms of what skills each develops. |
| 5. | Reading develops imagination, induction, reflection and critical thinking. |
| 6 | The relationship between word and image is becoming increasingly unstable, and the nexus of control is the way in which text gathers around the image and supervises its reading (See Jay David Bolter). |
| 7. | Students spending much more time with visual media, their critical thinking skills suffer, yet their visual intelligence is actually rising. |
Two Assumptions |
|
| Assumption Number One | |
| "As students spend more time with visual media and less time
with print, evaluation methods that include visual media will give
a better picture of what they actually know." --Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles. |
|
| Assumption Number Two | |
| Make sure your course design focuses on critical thinking, collaboration and revision and includes a balanced diet of media in order to develop visual intelligence and social intelligence. | |
2nd Digital Composition: The Dreseden Bombing
| Let’s compare the PowerPoint Dresden composition to the paper script created for the same project. | |
The Bombing of Dresden Was
Unnecessary-- A Student |
|
| During the last year of World War II, Britain’s Royal Air Force sent 300 Lancaster bombers to attack Dresden. At the end of the bombing raid, 2,690 tons of explosive and incendiary bombs had fallen on the German city and more than 25,000 people had died. Over the years, many questions have arisen as to whether or not the bombing was justifiable. Why Dresden? It had no anti-aircraft guns or any form of defense; it also lacked any real military forces. Royal Air Force officials believed bombing the town would stop the flow of German troops. The fact is, German troops were already retreating and there were very few left in the town during the attack. Why bomb a town with barely any military men or even military factories? Another thing that makes this raid very difficult to rationalize this raid is the fact that highly questionable tactics were employed. Part of why the town was attacked was to terrorize civilians into surrender-this is highly controversial, and it ultimately failed miserably in having any effect on Germany’s surrender. Even still, the war was almost over. One of the last major battles in the Ardennes forest, the Battle of the Bulge, already ended in Allied victory. The reality was that Dresden was a revenge attack by the British and Americans for civilian losses during the Battle of Britain. Both nations knew and fully understood massive civilians casualties would be taken; yet it was of little concern. From this, we can conclude that not only was Dresden unnecessary because it failed to bring the Germans to surrender, but that the massive casualties lost were for no justifiable cause at all. | |
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Evaluation--Traditional
writing and reading skills |
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| In both compositions, there is a thesis and a balance of argument with evidence. There is also a clear beginning, middle and end. Finally, the students are looking at primary and secondary sources. | |
| However, it it most important to remember that these digital compositions are part of a writing, reading, and revising process. I tend to think of them as "drafts". | |
Recommendations: (with a
tip of the hat to Clifford Lee) |
|
| 1. | Scaffold the writing process in clearly defined, separate pieces, with the ultimate goal of creating the text, image, sound and voiceover narrative. |
| 2. | Include an authentic demonstration of their work in some type of exhibition, so that students are motivated to complete the project for mastery, rather than completion – AND it gives the students a sense of purpose for their writing. |
| 3. | Scaffold EVERY aspect of the digital story project: • Show models of strong storytelling techniques and analyze those together. • Do a workshop with the incorporation of the "right" type of music that serves to complement your story. • Play student-made and adult-made digital stories as models to critically analyze and evaluate prior to their assembly. • Have students go through peer-edits in the writing AND reading of their voiceover narrative. |
| 4. | Push students to be more meta-cognitive about their inclusion of visual and audio clips, making sure that the visual does dominate the text; emphasize and model critical thinking skills at every step in the process. |
| 5. | Teach students the importance of word choice, and when to use the image or sound to carry the narrative argument, through workshops and models, to emphasize how to make an important point with fewer words. |
| 6. | Create a community of learners who are comfortable with collaboration and socializing the process of composing and revising. |
| 7, | Understand that assessment is going to be complex and rewarding. |
How We Conference Students
in American Studies |
|
Experienced writers play with their ideas. They socialize by writing multiple drafts and seeking feedback. Teachers comment on drafts, use peer reviews and collaboration in order to get students into the habit of experienced writers. We want our students to view writing as a recursive, rather than a one time experience. Students need to understand that revision means rethinking their argument and balancing their evidence in the light of new understanding. Students need to see writing as a social process and not as a solitary experience. They need to seek out a circle of critical friends, a community of writers who can give encouragement and significant feedback. |
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So in our American Studies curricular design we ask them to write (play) a lot and view their writing as an evolving, everyday practice. Since the American Studies is an advanced college credit level course, the writing is mostly argumentative. We build in a time for feedback and for socializing the process of writing, reading and research.
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Initially we focus on low pressure activities, such as brainstorming or creating timelines or responding to primary sources. We include time for lots of early, “crazy” drafts. Then we help the students to narrow their topic and balancing evidence and argument. We place a premium on our students being responsible of outside sources, and we help them evaluate sources and then integrate evidence into their research perspective.
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We set high expectations and focus the majority of our feedback (both written and spoken) on higher level thinking priorities. We set up a regular schedule of individual conferencing, peer reviews, and collaboration. Short papers (2-3 pages) are usually experiments in critical thinking; for example we might expect a one page synopsis and two pages of their own ideas. Or we might expect a quick multi-media presentation on the Beats or on the Harlem Renaissance, or on the targeting of Dresden. On longer papers, we give our students time to change their minds later.
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| These digital compositions must be viewed as "chapters" in the 1818 course digital sourcebook. They must be argumentative and reflect superior research, analysis and citation. The students are working together jointly to accomplish a common intellectual purpose in a manner superior to what might have been accomplished working alone. | |
A Community of Writers |
|
| One of our great experiences with the
SLU 1818 program has been our annual field trip to the Pius Library
to learn research methodology and our presentation by Sue Mendelsohn,
the Writing Center Coordinator at St. Louis University, on the habits
of experienced writers. (See the handout.) |
|
SLU Preservice: Writing Across the Curriculum
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Based upon Nancy Sommers “Revision Strategies of Student
Writers and Experienced Adult Writers,” one might conclude
the following principles of composition: |
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| Writing is rewriting; and revision is rethinking | |
| Writing is a Social Process | |
| Teachers help their students best by giving feedback and concentrating critical thinking--on a student's argument and ideas and on higher level thinking priorities. | |
| Teachers should try to create in their classrooms, and beyond, a community of writers. | |
| College Level Expectations, as Sue Mendelsohn suggests, is that the student fashion “a complex argument presented in simple language.” | |
| Grading: Treat the writing as in-process rather than a fixed product. Don’t encourage obsession with correctness but do encourage the habits of good writers. |
|
Evaluation and Assessment
of Contemporary Compositions |
|
Assessment is a strange thing. For years I’ve taught this Gatsby Magazine project where the students created a magazine, first on paper and now as an in-house website. At CBC every kid has a laptop and the whole campus is wired. So, naturally, we have encouraged the students to include multimedia---music, film, and flash into their projects. However, while the underlying composition principles are the same, there are still problems when you try to grade group work, or work of various skills. |
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| Collaborative, multi-modal compositions create a persistent challenge for the assessment of student work. How can you effectively gauge student involvement and learning in collaborative groups, when the amount of writing, editing, managing is sometime uneven or hard to readily evaluate? Sometimes self-grading helps assess student learning. Often, the teacher needs to learn how to use different assessment criteria across the various projects (e.g., essays, web design, multimedia production, discussion board management and sound effects), and how both individuals and small groups could be accountable for their learning. The courageous teacher eventually devises ways to address these assessments challenges, employing informal assessment strategies (e.g., checklists, note-taking, observation and conferencing) as well as formal strategies (e.g., grades for completed projects). Yet, teachers may always remain concerned about whether he/she was adequately gauging some students’ work. | |
| 1. | My advice is to hold up high standards, yet be flexible in your grading. Often it will take several years for teachers to become truly comfortable in their evaluations of these projects. |
| 2. | Look for unexpected successes. |
| 3. | Focus instruction on student inquiry and critical thinking skills by responding to students individual responsibilities in process and carefully modeling critical thinking skills at every opportunity. |
| 4. | It has been my experience that, even when student production has appeared uneven, there is great promise in establishing a set of meta-cognitive behaviors that have proven to develop better writers. Teachers often see PowerPoint presentations as the end of the learning experience, when they are really first drafts to a wider audience. |
The Future |
|
| I'm interested in making social networking the center of our classroom in order to give our students a global voice. We now have a wiki where we can present, in a safe environment, our work and comment in a supportive, academic space. Hopefully, some of the other 1818 schools would like to join us. | |
Links and Resources:
| Presentation Downloads | |
| Student Presentations and Copyrights | |
| Digital Compositions--Collaborative, Multimedia Research Rubric | |
| Dresden Assignment | |
| Research Journal | |
| Two Close Friends and their Digital Storytelling Experiences | |
| Literacy,
ELL, and Digital Storytelling: 21st Century Learning in Action :January 2009 A short video documents a semester-long digital writing project led by two Bay Area Writing Project teacher-consultants. It features my friend Clifford Lee. |
|
| Digital Storytelling Brings New Dimensions to Reading, Writing, and More: Can digital storytelling improve reading comprehension, writing skills, and media literacy? (Some of you might have read this last week.) It features my friend | |
| Standards | |
| International Society for Technology in Education Student Profiles for grades K-12 A general set of profiles describing technology (ICT) literate students at key developmental points in their precollege education. The profiles highlight a few important types of learning activities in which students might engage. | |
| Digital Storytelling | |
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| Equipment | |
| • Access to personal computers with Windows XP operating system
(and therefore, MovieMaker software) • Digital cameras • Access to the World Wide Web • Microphones • Computer Video Projector (for presenting final projects) • DVD burner (for creating movies to take home) • Software for streaming video through Web (i.e, Quicktime) -- if you consider publishing your movies on a school website (otherwise, not really necessary) • Scanner |
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| Web Sites that Allow Legal Access to Images, Music, etc… | |
| • Creative Commons
is this site provides links to a host of sites and organizations that
have agreed to some leniency of copyright protection. • Discovery School is this site is geared towards educators and students, with free material that is intended to be used for school projects. • The Free Site is this site is loaded with free web-based things, and this link connects you to their clip art index. • Free Kids Music -- this site has children's music available from artists who have agreed to share their work for free for children and educators. |
|
| The Readings: | |
| Fun Reading--Everyone | |
| Directions: Over the next week, read at least two of the the below articles in depth and take notes in a Microsoft Word document, as if it were a notebook, and be prepared to cut and paste your answers into our class discusson board. At least skim over the remaining article for key ideas. | |
Is
Technology Producing a Decline in Critical Thinking and Analysis? Science Daily (January 29, 2009) |
|
| No Book Report: Skim It and Weep | |
| Literacy,
ELL, and Digital Storytelling: 21st Century Learning in Action :January 2009 A short video documents a semester-long digital writing project led by two Bay Area Writing Project teacher-consultants. It features my friend Clifford Lee. |
|
| Digital Storytelling Brings New Dimensions to Reading, Writing, and More: Can digital storytelling improve reading comprehension, writing skills, and media literacy? (Some of you might have read this last week.) | |
| "Why
IT Has Not Paid Off As We Hoped" An examination of the courtship
between higher educaton and information technology. Edward L. Ayers and Charlse M. Grisham |
|
| "Why Teach Digital Writing?" from Writing in Digital Environments (WIDE) Research Center Collective | |
| Assessment and Assignments | |
| Read, Write, Think: Providing educators and students access to the highest quality practices and resources in reading and language arts instruction. | |
| ISTE: National Educational Standards | |
| International Society for Technology in Education Student Profiles for grades K-12 A general set of profiles describing technology (ICT) literate students at key developmental points in their precollege education. The profiles highlight a few important types of learning activities in which students might engage. | |
| This site (and all the information it contains - except where specified) is provided by Gary Ryan. |