Story
“Ideas are abstract, amorphous things. We must embody an idea in some definite, understandable form if we are to express it”.(Irvine, 1997)
It was evident, when watching “50 ways to tell a story” that selecting the appropriate tool for a digital story is equally as important as the story content. Each of the online tools affords different features which can enhance (or detract from) the story itself.
I initially chose a comic strip format which I felt would be very motivating for my students – unfortunately, I had some major connectivity issues during a group lesson at school and was unsuccessful with either Comiq or Pikistrips. For the purposes of my mini-unit at school I went with the desktop application Comic Life and had huge success with engaging my class in a group storytelling project called SuperSalmon. Because this story did not meet criteria for this MET project, I developed a new story.
I played with a number of other web based tools and came across Storybird. I used this tool to create a simple tale called Zack’s Lunch Hunch that has great potential for use with my primary school aged students as a writing prompt and motivator. The best thing about Storybird is that there is no need to upload any content – a huge library of high quality creative commons artwork is already there. Unfortunately, this feature proved to be a limitation – being unable to add my own photos or artwork the stories I was able to create felt too basic and disjointed.
Here is the result of my final tool selection – Joggle.
NB: sorry for the constant ‘loop’ – you can manually stop the play as soon as you see the first frame (of the pretty bay) repeated – this is also when the music ends.
Why is this story worth telling?
This story, Meet My Ocean Friends, helps introduce students to some of the many creatures they might meet if they were to snorkel in our local waters. By making the connection between an activity (snorkeling) and the subject (marine animals) I hope to emphasize the value of experiencing and, hopefully, preserving marine environments. The story has a simple circular plot which helps students develop their prediction skills and is ideal for introducing narrative writing to young authors.
NB: there is great room for improvement here! My initial comic strip attempt took several hours of storyboarding and creation together with my students … given time, I would like to add elements to each of the ‘meetings’ the Sea Lion and Vic have with the various ocean animals… these events would add complication and interest to the plot. Further, these events could help to develop content by providing non-fiction details about the animals shown. Even without these additions, however, I believe the story helps introduce local marine animals in a basic way.
Why was this the right tool for you to use to tell your story?
I purposefully selected a tool that afforded voice over narration, captions and slideshow functionality because I knew, after mapping my ideas using an online tool for circular plots from Read-Write-Think, that the story could and should incorporate these elements. I had a huge library of high quality images at my disposal that I wished to use and I wanted my story accessible to non-readers and readers alike.
I also wanted to avoid uploading my photos to a photo sharing database such as flickr or picasa. If I were to create an online story with my students, I would want them to be able to easily upload their photos from our computer desktop and avoid any unnecessary steps. The photos I used were donated to the Friends of Semiahmoo Bay Society for our use in Educational Outreach. I have permission from the photographers to use these photos for the purposes of my Moodle Module and this course, but I do not have permission to share them in any other way. Since I’m not terribly familiar with the privacy settings in these databases, I made sure the tool I chose afforded direct upload.
What are the strengths of a storytelling approach? What are the limitations?
Melanie Green, in the Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, outlines four benefits of storytelling:
Storytelling has been used throughout history by many cultures to pass down important knowledge and is one of the first ways young children learn about the world around them. As a result,
children of all ages have an affinity to story time and easily become engaged in narrative. Because it is engaging, the flow of the narrative can help develop a deeper understanding of content rather than simply being a list of facts to remember (or forget).
References:
Green, M. 1994. Storytelling in teaching. The Observer (17)4. Retrieved from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=1562
Irvine, A. 1997. The six steps: a storytellers journey. Works in Progress: the journal of the art and business of storytelling. Retrieved from http://www.alanirvine.com/wip/types/sixsteps.htm