Will teachers will be able to justify the time it takes to learn and teach these tech applications?

 

Some teachers are willing to take risks and some are not. Since learning how to work with weblogs and digital storytelling is difficult and time consuming, more conservative teachers are waiting for the bugs to be worked out as "early adopters" establish a catalog of lessons, activities, adaptations, and organizational systems. This has to be. Although the hardware is in place in many districts, integrating the use of the equipment in classroom activities takes time. Thankfully, districts are allowing more in service time for training in such things as blogging and digital storytelling.

 

Regarding fitting something like digital storytelling into the year’s curriculum cycle, A huge amount of time is required to plan, prepare for, and teach digital storytelling or activities involving blogging the first time around. In an elementary classroom a teacher has the flexibility in the schedule to make it work. However, in a secondary classroom with 50 minute periods, it is considerably harder to use two weeks for the activity with State Standards breathing down one's neck. As it is, covering all the Standards is a challenge.

 

How do we encourage people to take on the challenge? Let’s start with thinking about what is being taught in two weeks of digital storytelling:

• Writing: Drafting and revision
• Photography Skills
• Use of Photoshop Software
• Downloading images from the web.
• Downloading music
• The ability to think visually, to compose with the images in mind and to collect images with the writing in mind. (A special awareness of audience built into the process.
• The ability to create and enhance a certain tone with all facets on the composition.
• The ability to speak back to and be a part of the multimedia world
• The ability to parse the media they are surrounded by, to analyze it more critically.
• Hey, this is sounding pretty good.

Perhaps schools and districts have to broaden the definition of "Standards". There actually are technology standards as well as academic subject area standards such as English Language Arts. See the ISTE website for a look at the NETS, the national technology standards.

 

The time is well spent when we consider not just what is taught but also what is learned. For three boys in my class this year, digital storytelling was the only language arts activity that they fully engaged in all year long. Getting them to do the initial writing was very labor intensive for me because of their resistance to write. These were boys with severe family problems that were frequently inattentive in class. Once they began work on making their movie, They were very involved and needed little direction. Moreover, they were more engaged in activities in English class until the end of the year.

 

The public nature of the digital movies offered a big incentive to produce one’s best work. There was one girl who, even though I had explained the process, said to me afterwards, “If I had know what we were going to do, I would have written a better poem.” She’s in the Bay Area Writing Project Digital Storytelling Camp this summer, and she is pouring much more effort into her writing.

 

Tech skills are worth the trouble.

# - Karen Adams - 6/29/06; 11:22:46 PM to the 02_Middle Dept.- Discuss

Can I write a response that is all questions?

Regarding students:

How do we address Standards? Which Standard? Technology Standard? Language Arts Standards? Is too much time taken from the cycle of the year's curriculum doing digital projects? Is it different in secondary/Single subject classes than in elementary integrated, multiple subject situations? Is the knowledge intrinsicly valuable therefore defendable? Is the student buy in such that students reain more because it's exciting?

Regarding teachers:

Can teachers tolerate the open-ended experimentation, the steep learning curve? Do we need to accrue more "tested" lessons - Are we still in "early adopter" phase?

# - Karen Adams - 6/23/06; 12:04:51 PM to the 02_Middle Dept.- Discuss

Digital Storytelling” was the highlight of my teaching year.  After two weeks of preparation, writing and collecting “visual assets”, the Pearson professionals came into my Albany Middle School classroom in mid-September and helped my fifty-nine sixth graders turn their poems and pictures into digital magic. However, during this Summer Tech Institute, as I reflected on my students’ experience, I was caught by this question:

How did digital storytelling effect my definition of writing?

This question becomes an issue for me when I consider how enriched the students’ writing became through the use of visual images and sound as they developed their “Digital Stories”.  Of course, I loved the new emotional and multi-dimensional version created by the addition of the images. Their meaning was broadened and deepened.  Their communicated message, however, had gone beyond words.

In my opinion, by the inclusion of multi-media, the message has skipped over into a new genre. By speaking this new language of multi-media, the writer does not have to communicate in the same fullness and complexity as if using only the words alone. This has its benefits and detriments. As sixth graders, my students are developmentally moving into more abstract and symbolic thinking. For most of them, this type of thinking is harder to express in words than in pictures. Since a “picture is worth a thousand words”, they could create a meaning without having to deal with expressing it clearly in words. Is this a benefit or a detriment? For some of my students whose thinking outstrips their writing ability, it enabled them to display subtle meanings that revealed inner thoughts. But do visuals take them off the hook, since the students can express themselves without the challenge of written clarity?  I’m not sure –I’m still mulling this over.

Fran Sheppard
Albany Middle School
Summer 2006

# - Fran Sheppard - 6/22/06; 3:16:43 PM to the 02_Middle Dept.- Discuss

Stacy Uyeda teaches at Albany Middle School, a small public school district next door to Berkeley, in the East Bay.

What is the role of assessment in project-based, multimedia curricula?

What happened?
I arrived at Albany Middle School knowing that it was filled with distinguished (BAWP) teachers and an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse population of students, many of whom perform well in the areas of academics and extracurricular activities.

I was not prepared, however, for the fairly dismal state of technology tools in the Library Media Center and the other classrooms.  Unlike surrounding districts, Albany has found a way to pull its smaller-sized organization out from debt.  I wondered if this lack of any modern equipment was one way of streamlining the budget.  Another cost-cutting measure was the district's severely under-staffed technology support team.  Actually, the team comprised one person to work across six sites and to carry a job description better designed for a team of ten.

I am grateful that I could comfortably approach the principal and ask her if I could revive the school's Technology Committee that had gone defunct for several years.  I served as the Technology Committee Chair at Willard Middle School, in Berkeley, and had learned a great deal about what happens when state-of-the-art technology tools become available to teachers and students.

Two years later, three teachers gracefully guided their English students through digital storytelling collaborations with the Pearson Foundation, and the iBook Mobile Lab in the Library has been utilized nearly non-stop for everything from eighth grade I-Search research, ESL Google Earth explorations, and a slew of grade-level history projects.

One of my personal objectives is to empower Resource students and to give them more focused time with the technology tools.  I helped eighth grade Special Education students with posting their I-Search links on a wiki.  For two years, I have tried to collaborate closely with the Resource teachers in crafting a unit that culminates their reading of Christopher Paul Curtis' The Watsons Go to Birmingham; an understanding of the Civil Rights Movement, the setting of the novel; and their own personal narrative into a PowerPoint presentation.  The lesson's structure has improved, and I grapple with the use of a rubric to help students figure out how to create a quality presentation.

Why did it happen?

The influx of modern equipment occurred because I was able to link our Science Department with a UC Berkeley-based online science curriculum project, WISE.  With the structured support of WISE -- through both professional development and a budget to help buy the iBook Mobile Lab -- veteran science teachers felt refreshed and excited.  The principal spread the word to the strong PTA at our school, and more money was earmarked for another iBook Mobile Lab.  I have been fortunate to have been present during a more "feast" fiscal year when some additional funding has been located to purchase yet a third iBook Mobile Lab.

What might it mean?

We still are being dazzled by the bells and whistles.  The teachers and students pretty much marvel at finding a USB port on a school computer or being able to access the Web without freezing the machine. 

Regarding assessment of student work, I feel a little bit like any time a student uses PowerPoint or iMovie or a web design site, they receive immediate kudos.  But what about the quality of the work? The content of their writing?  The "craftsmanship of communication" that DigiTales' Bernajean Porter describes?

I know that in my Watsons Go to Birmingham PowerPoint projects, I always wring my hands over the quality of the students' writing and the appearance of their slides.  The resource students experience a steep learning curve and don't get much time to finesse each slide.  The experience seems to strengthen more their confidence as computer users, and they always recognize that they've acquired a "real-world" skill, using this PowerPoint application that adults also use.

The Watsons students also always have brought their personal narratives and stories to the Library already written.  I'm not sure how much time they've had to work their writing through the writing process.  There's never enough Library time to focus solely on their writing, and the collaborating teachers still think me as a technology/library teacher, rather than as a writing teacher.

What are the implications for my practice?

I am convinced that I need to continue my approach of "structured flexibility," that I need to create opportunities for students -- and teachers! -- to experiment, reflect, and experience success.

I have to work into the Watsons project more time for reflection and evaluation (a.k.a. assessment).  Now that I have some student examples, I think that new students could evaluate the strengths of sample presentations and help me to build the rubric more organically.  It's also crucial that the students have a chance to present the PowerPoint presentations to each other; we always run out of time.  This factor would affect the length of the personal narratives; many of them have been too long for a PowerPoint presentation.  Or, perhaps this is not the right forum for the personal narratives, and we should focus on their understanding of the Civil Rights Movement in framing the Curtis novel.

I don't know what I'm going to do about not being able to work with students' writing more often.  I don't know if other teachers will see an opportunity to have me act as a guest-writing teacher. 

What this story means for me is that my role as the teacher librarian is a liminal one.  The library itself is a site of "older" technology (books) meeting "newer" technologies.  I am constantly crossing the borders between teacher of students and guide to adult professional development.  As a part-time teacher raising a toddler, I am pretty exhausted...yet exhilarated by seeing how play and discovery in a two-year-old is similar to the joy of a sixth grader playing with iMovie. 

I always feel a bit behind the curve in finding up-to-date and efficient solutions to teachers' technology integration questions.  It also can be a bittersweet pill to swallow that some forget my experience as an English and history teacher.  I'm going to try not to stress out so much about having to give teachers the "reality check" when they ask me why something tech-wise may or may not work.  As my principal says, "Someone has to do it."  Yeah, it's a dirty job.

# - Stacy Uyeda - 6/22/06; 11:29:04 AM to the 02_Middle Dept.- Discuss