Synthesize what we have been reading and discussing in class about student multimodal composition / digital storytelling with the unique small group dynamics and technology use in the classroom where you are observing. What are the pedagogical implications for the integration of digital storytelling / multimodal composition into a unit of study? (~ 500-750 words).
Multimodal storytelling brings together the range of storytelling modes; the word, the song, the image and unites it with an ability to include many voices. It is the multiplicity of modes and voices that is the strength and power of digital storytelling. Telling a story that affects us on many levels of experience has the potential to unite us as well. Within a small group classroom assignment the potential of digital storytelling is that each track of the digital story can be thought of as a voice unique to each student producing the story. Each student shares visual and auditory space with each other student and their united voices form a new shared experience in storytelling, much like the video game was a shared experience, this is an experience that can be more powerful if produced collectively rather than independently. As a communication tool, the digital storytelling method can be an immersive event for the viewer/participant. And for the producer, the digital story offers a multitude of entry points, visual/audio/written into the process of creating meaning and opening the craft of storytelling for more students to be producers of knowledge and meaning. A digital story offers and affords students opportunities to layer individual meaning into a larger story mosaic through image and sound. The digital story offers the group an opportunity to layer and braid; graft and glue together a multitude of voices and stories. Further, using the digital story as an instrument of social change the method holds a variety of possibilities for student learning and civic engagement in a social studies classroom setting.
The digital story telling process can bring in new voices around the campfire but the process must still be evaluated somehow? Are my students learning how to tell a story? Are they learning the process of collaboration? Are they using this knowledge to become citizens?
Observations of three 8th grade Social Studies classes, consisting of 20-25 suburban students each, for a total of 29 hours over 5 weeks. The students had produced the week before classes were cancelled a traditional pen and paper poster project as the culmination of a unit of study regarding the Bill of Rights. Had I left at that point I would have witnessed very little use of technology in those classrooms for that particular project, a conscious pedagogical choice, I believe, that created a fully accessible lesson. The next unit of study was a civic engagement assignment centered on political activism. I observed for only a few hours the students working on this project but it showed me how easily students shifted from gallery walks and traditional forms of instruction in the previous unit to showing their real strengths in using technology, i.e. their Chromebooks, to produce internet research and authentic work. Each group of 3-5 students in the classroom had little difficulty finding research on their given topic or how to find contact information for the elected officials which was part of the assignment. Many students found, seemingly simultaneously, elected officials preferred using email, and this information spread rapidly among the groups. Some students or groups were choosing to use the phone to contact their representative, I found the phone use interesting, but I was unable to follow up as to the difference in choice. It was interesting to watch how once the knowledge of sending an elected official an electronic communication spread first through a single classroom then through the subsequent classrooms. With teacher scaffolding internet-available information resources and the ubiquitous Google searches student learning needs were provided for that met their needs for their exploration of how ‘changing law’ begins. Watching the members of these small groups interact for the purpose of researching, delegating, and deciding topic points was interesting in the group dynamics of role choice. Once the students were in command of their research topics members of the group worked in a generally independent-dependent manner in loose cohesion with each other with each researching what they needed, and when they remembered also sharing what they needed between their group members and just as easily between other students and groups. As 8th graders these students were experts at the group projects that much of middle school required of them and they had spent years tolerating their groan-inspiring necessity. I witnessed how quickly the roles were formally and informally adopted or assigned within the groups. The implications on teaching seemed to be to stand back and let them race down roads they were already familiar with, aware of the lanes but not yet wary of the potholes, so it would be my task to keep them pointed on the right road, scaffold them to find the best resources, and to keep them focused on learning the craft of storytelling and the art of cooperation.
CitizenTeacherPlanner Education&Technology 