Spoonfuls of Applesauce

I created a website to share my son's ADHD story. If you have time, I'd love for some people to view it and give some feedback. This is my final project for my Digital Storytelling course.

With this, another semester and two more classes toward my M. Ed. are complete.

bit.ly/spoonfulsofapplesauce

EDUC 5333 - Digital Story Progress & More

This past week was productive. I managed to complete my story map and story table & script and added content to a Google Site I made for Braden's story. Much of the feedback I received about the initial story idea tried to address my concern about keeping the story within a 5-8 minute timeframe. After contacting my instructor I felt much relief. Evidently, the story itself doesn't have to be 5-8 minutes in length. Our summary and reflection that we present needs to be 5-8 minutes in length. Our peers are to view/hear our story before our presentation.

Gathering photos for this project and converting them from HEIC to JPG or PNG took much longer than I expected. Recording and adjusting the audio to have consistent quality across the whole site also took some time. Initially, I considered not adding audio, but I think it adds more feeling than what someone would experience by reading text only. The audio is an optional component but is available for anyone that would like to hear the story instead of, or along with, reading it. I considered using the Choose Your Own Adventure-style of storytelling, but I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with all of this to start. Maybe I'll try something like that later.

For the presentation during week 7, I plan to briefly walk-through the website I created for this assignment. I would like to demonstrate each of the components - audio, text, pictures, surveys, and resource links. I won't have time to go through all aspects of the site, but I hope to provide a sampling of each type of component.

Potential Resources to Use in the Classroom

There are several resources I could see my middle school students use. They're all so app-savvy, but they don't necessarily know how to use their Chromebooks - it's a work-in-progress. Here's a list of what I'd try first on Chromebooks with my group of 7th-graders:

Screencastify - I absolutely could see students using this to record an explanation of an assignment, to make a tutorial for other students, or to create a presentation for later viewing.

Soundtrap - I love this tool, all the options it has, and the ease of use for creating vocal recordings and music!

Comic Life or Motion Comics or Storyboard That - These could be fun for personal storytelling or for our succession comic assignment in the spring. (I've had students use Storyboard That before, so the other comic sites will be interesting to add in.)

Above resources were found here: 

Kapular, D. (September 7, 2018). Top 30 tools and apps for digital storytelling.  Tech & Learning.  Retrieved from:  https://www.techlearning.com/tl-advisor-blog/30-sites-and-apps-for-digital-storytelling

Community Assignment Precursor

As a precursor to an upcoming assignment, we are now asked to consider our audience, skills, and the impact this story may have.

Who is the authentic audience for this story? Who will be impacted by it? In what ways might this story resonate with this audience?

I suppose the target audience is anyone trying to better understand what a journey through ADHD diagnosis and treatment may look like. I hope my family better understands what led us to make some of our decisions about treatment and identification in school. I hope parents, educators, siblings, and other children will try the simulations available on Understood.org so they may better understand ADHD and other learning challenges. It's hard to accept what you don't understand, and Understood.org certainly takes some of the mystery away. I hope everyone that experiences Braden's story leaves with a bit more compassion and empathy for those with learning challenges - especially those challenges that are not visible.

What skills and knowledge have you developed as you created your story?

I have further developed many skills with this assignment. I've worked on photo editing, audio editing, website design, scripting/storyboarding, and research. I certainly have a greater appreciation for storytellers now. In addition to this course, I've also listened to an audio course about storytelling during my commute the past month. While the audio course is about live storytelling, not digital, I still feel I learned some tips and tricks that I hope to put to use in my classroom.

How might your community/students be impacted by engaging in digital storytelling? What role can I play?

I think my students would benefit greatly from learning to tell their stories digitally. Digital storytelling takes some of the discomforts of public speaking away. While the whole world can see the story, the pressure of dozens or hundreds of eyes on you during a recitation is absent. There is an opportunity to fine-tune and edit before publishing, and even after publishing, as needed. As students share their stories they may find they have more in common than not. So often, especially in middle school, students can feel alone and like there's no help or solution available. If they hear others with similar stories, maybe they won't feel so alone. Maybe they'll see a resolution to a story like their own and feel hope. Maybe they'll be the ones that provide hope to someone else.

EDUC 5333 - Project Plan

This week, we are asked to post a preliminary project plan for our digital story so we may receive feedback on it.

Since my plan is still fluid at this point, I will post a link to the current version. Subsequent posts will have more updated versions.

Preliminary Project Plan - Week 3 - revised 2019/11/06

EDUC 5333 - Considering a Digital Story

This week, we are asked to view one or more digital stories and to respond to a few prompts about it. I viewed several but decided to consider two in more detail.

#MetKids - Our Words, Our Stories: Digital Storytelling Lab

What are your overall impressions of what you saw?

In #MetKids, I felt good watching it. The kids looked to be enjoying themselves and the music was upbeat. It felt very professionally done but was still playful.

How could it be used in education?

#MetKids could be used to show how inspiration can come from many places and how collaborative writing might look.

What content area is addressed?

#MetKids seems to address art and history through the focus materials, and language arts through the product.

How would you assess what you saw?

I would want to #MetKids based on these criteria: research, project planning, story, and originality/voice/creativity. 

Did they perform research and document it? Yes - their research and documentation was completed as they viewed exhibits, drew sketches, and took notes. They even got to use Minecraft to redesign parts of the MET digitally. 

Did they actually plan their story, or did they wing it?  Yes - they did extensive planning - both individual and collaborative and on paper and with technology. One student mentioned the use of a site called Twine that I feel I now need to really check out! (Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books are some of my favorites.) 

How well did their story work? WOW! I feel their story worked wonderfully! They pieced together many options for storylines and endings and made it interactive. 

How creative was the production? WOW again! This project was hugely creative, collaborative, and put a fresh twist on how history could have gone. This project connects these kids to history, helps them better understand what was happening and why, and lets them put it all into terms they understand. What an amazing job they all did!

"Turn" - by Dana Atchley

What are your overall impressions of what you saw?

"Turn" reminds me of when we would get out the slide projector and look at photos of my mom's generation and my grandparents' generation growing up. It took me back to when I was a kid at the holidays - doing the same thing each year, looking at old photos and somehow reminiscing about a time I wasn't actually there.

How could it be used in education?

"Turn could be used as an example of how students could tell a story of themselves or their families. They could tell a story using clips or photos from their own past, or the past of others.

What content area is addressed?

The content addressed is personal history. You could also potentially delve into fashion, but that's a bit of a stretch.

How would you assess what you saw?

I would assess this digital story based on story, economy, flow, and presentation.

How well did the story work? I feel it worked well since it took me back to my own memories of looking at my mother's and grandparents' past.

Was the information presented without gaps or detours? I thought the story was rather concise and ended with a light bit that made me smile - showing the progression of his own father's growth and ending with what he became in his 30's.

Was the story well organized? I feel the sequential timeline from his father as a child, through his own childhood, and then with a still as an adult captured the motion of growing and the stillness of a moment in time of who we are at a single moment - implying if we were to unfreeze that moment we would continue on a journey of growth and change.

How effective was the presentation? I thought the narration of his own story was perfect. It allowed me to feel present in his family and let me connect to his personal story better than having an outsider narrate.

*For the assessment criteria, I selected from the "List of Digital Story Evaluation Traits" created by Ohler (2013, p.90). 

Reference

Ohler, J. B. (2013). Digital storytelling in the Classroom: New media pathways to literacy, learning, and creativity (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.