Digital Storytelling in the Classroom - Article #1

Overview:

In the 5th chapter of his book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom, Dr. Jason Ohler talks about stories. In Chapter 5, Dr. Ohler does not just talk about stories, he focuses on the usefulness of "the story core" and "story mapping" in particular. Dr. Ohler's main inspiration for the story core and story map outlines in this chapter is Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, though he laudably also mentions the many other story archetypes out there! He relates that the purpose of creating a story core when embarking on a Digital Storytelling event is to identify the essential narrative elements. This makes it much easier to see the main thrust and worth of your story. On a related note, the main purpose of story mapping is basically to identify the compelling elements of your story in more detail - a specific graphic tool given is the "Visual Portrayal of a Story," or VPS, which has a "beginning, middle, and end" just like they always told us to strive for in grade school, albeit with a bit more detail and useful insight into the driving force behind great stories.

From the Chapter:

• Introducing the story core at the beginning of a DST project helps students
  to focus at the outset on the power of their stories, and helps them see their
  own experiences as a great source of story material.
• Story planning and development steps:
  Get idea, Create story core, Create story map, Write the narrative, story, and/or script,
  Create storyboard if warranted
• Storyboards show the flow of story motion, while story maps show the flow of story
  emotion.
• Don’t have students use computers to create the VPS. They just get in the way at this point. Just have them use paper and pencil.
• The story map provides teachers a way to quickly ascertain the potential
  of a student’s story.
  

How are these ideas useful to me as a teacher?

I can't express the struggle I experience trying to convince my kids (and myself, in the face of so much opposition!) that my material is vital and powerful stuff. I believe that asking myself to produce a story core before each lesson (possibly in the form of a formal educational "objective," but certainly in parallel to whatever the objective is for the day) would help me find that sense of importance I always seek and do not always find in my material.

Goodness. How often did I sit and spend hours creating power points from scratch before I realized that sketching an outline on paper beforehand was a heck of a lot easier? A lot of time, I tell you. A lot. Even after I'd experimented with pre-digital coalescing of power points, I continued on creating them from scratch on occasion, running on the dogged assumption that I could get better at straight-to-power point work if I just practiced, darnit! I am a slow worker, so it always helps to hear and RE-HEAR methods of improving my creative efficiency, methods like, "Don't beat your head against the wall with technology until you've got your story effectively finished."

As a teacher, the last point in particular is a very important point for me to hear - if you're going to ask students to invest a lot of time and effort into Digital Story Telling of any type, or in any project for that matter, it's cool of you to have them sketch it out beforehand so they don't spend countless hours polishing a story/project that is, overall, mediocre even with an excellent shine job.