Digital stories by future teachers

I am blown away by the variety of topics and approaches represented in the following sample of digital stories created in summer 2010 by future teachers in the teacher education program at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville College of Education Health and Human Sciences.

We use Apple's iMovie and encourage our students to consider future educational contexts as they narrow down a topic and potential target audience for their digital stories.  We also talk about copyright and fair use issues and guide students toward locating copyright-friendly media (music, graphics, video) from the Public Domain or Creative Commons.  I recommend students use original media (photos, illustration, voiceover narration) whenever possible.

The final iMovies are exported as QuickTime files and embedded in the preservice teachers' blogs.  

My hope is that each preservice teacher will find himself or herself in a future classroom setting where they can use their artifacts to instruct or simply to inspire, scaffolding young people in the creation of their own digital stories someday.

Enjoy!  And if possible leave a comment or some feedback for these novice filmmakers when you visit their blogs!

• Chicago: A Poem  Brooke used audio to record the poem and photos to represent.
• Life in 2 Worlds  Leah grew up in Tennessee and Vietnam.
• Geometry and Architecture  Kathleen is a math education person -- found images of buildings made from legos.
• How to tie your shoes  Katie did a "how to" video on tying shoes.  She used words and audio to enhance the message, once slow then fast.
• Time for Revolution  Joey combined his two passions: hard rock music and American history.
• Understanding Different Forms of Protest  Janna will be certified to teach the deaf and hard of hearing.  She included audio for her students who are partially hearing, but her main objective was to juxtapose signing with the English language lyrics from a popular 60s protest song, which appear in subtitles.  I think she did it!
• A Separate Peace  Justin hopes to teach the John Knowles classic when he enters the classroom as a high school English teacher.  He created this digital story to capture the essence of the novel.
• How to Make Pasta  Ashlee created this artifact with her future special education students in mind.
• Study Habits  Elizabeth was inspired by the Plain English videos.

Digital stories by future teachers

New literacies in practice: digital storytelling

What are "new literacies"?  It's a term -- to paraphrase Lankshear & Knoble (2006) -- that encompasses all the transformed social practices as well as the new forms of social practice brought about by the rise of digital and mobile technologies. These practices are significantly different from print-based literacies (pp. 24-25).

But what exactly does this transformation of social practices look like and sound like?

If someone were to ask me to explain new literacies, I would share my experience as a teacher/learner in TPTE 486, the course on technology integration that every preservice teacher must take at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. In 486 we create "digital stories," and this summer I was absolutely blown away by the remarkable innovation demonstrated by our K-12 preservice teachers as they engaged in very new ways with the traditional print-based practice of storytelling using Apple's iMovie.

Digital storytelling is new literacies in action.

And, it's important to note that when digital storytelling is done right, the principles of traditional storytelling remain in tact.  The content, the message, and the overall impact upon the listener and viewer are enhanced, not subverted, by the bells and whistles of technology.  With all due respect to Mr. McLuhan, this is not to suggest that the medium and the message are not intertwined and symbiotic -- they are -- but from an instructional standpoint, the teacher/facilitator/coach must not make the mistake of letting the digital tool hijack the storytelling process. 

I say this because our TPTE 486 students struggle mightily with the iMovie application, and I fear this may derail their ambition to integrate digital stories in their future practice with young learners (if any ambition of the sort existed in the first place). To quote Alan Levine who has cleverly documented the numerous Web 2.0 ways to tell a story,

It was not long ago that producing multimedia digital content required expensive equipment and technical expertise; we are at the point now where we can do some very compelling content creation with nothing more complex than a web browser.

photo by Pilar Torres

The storytelling tool, or "medium" as it were, is not necessarily inconsequential, for it does come to bear upon the storyteller's choices and the overall impression he or she creates.  As any good storyteller knows, success depends first upon careful consideration of one's subject, audience, and purpose.  Even the ancient Greek rhapsodes, after all, modified their epic performances according to local laws and customs while at the same time modulating the emotional quality of their voices and carefully choosing attire that would grab their audience's attention.

In digital storytelling, the key is to avoid overreliance upon any one tool.  Careful consideration of subject, audience, and purpose should drive the storyteller's choice of medium. Levine has annotated and linked to more than 50 such mediums at his digital storytelling wiki.

In my next post, I will share links to some of the best digital stories produced by preservice teachers during the Summer 2010 session at UT-Knoxville.

New literacies in practice: digital storytelling

Wordle used to illustrate TN Republican gubernatorial race

Our local newspaper here in East Tennessee used the word cloud generator Wordle to bring to life the words and platforms of the three Republican frontrunners in the Tennessee governor's race.

Here is the "Wordle" based on responses by Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam, who is running for governor (and outspending his opponents by more than three to one):



As a language arts and literacy teacher, I instantly recognized the value and application of word clouds -- also called "tag clouds" -- when I first saw them a few years ago.  It is exciting to see the use of this alternative conceptualization and visualization in the mainstream, even politics.

Wordle used to illustrate TN Republican gubernatorial race

What is TPACK?

I am really interested in the theoretical framework called TPCK or "TPACK" (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge).  What follows is a fake radio/video show created for the International Society for Technology in Education 2010 conference by Michigan State's Punya Mishra with Matt Koehler (and a bunch of other people who are thanked in the video).

In the words of Mishra and Koehler: "We were asked to create a video for ISTE, a conference that neither of us could attend. Our goal was to create an engaging 15 minute video that would convey our ideas about technology integration in teaching, specifically the TPACK framework."


TPACK Radio/Video Show ISTE 2010 from Punya Mishra on Vimeo.

What is TPACK?

Locating and using digital images

This is my collection of digital images on the theme of Old & New Literacies.  I created it using digital images obtained from five sources: screenshot, CD collection, free web-based source, scanner, and my own digital camera.  I hope you like it!



Collecting digital images from a variety of sources reminds me of how easy it is these days to obtain visuals for teaching and learning.  I used to own an expensive (and buggy) desktop publishing software with a clip art collection in it.  I used it a lot to create classroom materials, posters, and student hand outs.  My options were pretty limited back then. 

Today, I would still prefer to take and use my own photos or (if I was more artistically inclined) to draw my own illustrations and visual aids, but when those are not options, there are tons of ways to access free and legal images for teaching and instruction.  I am compiling many of my favorite web-based image and visualization tools at my TPTE 486 course site.

What are your favorite ways to obtain and use digital images for instruction?

Locating and using digital images

Web evaluation resources

I love the resources provided by Alan November at November Learning.  His collection of free Information Literacy Resources is awesome.

Web evaluation resources