Readings – ETEC 565 HJD e-portfolio

Digital Storytelling

Digital story Lesson # 2 – read assignments carefully and clarify understandings. Sometimes you take a wrong turn and have to begin again.

My experience with the digital story telling started with multiple ideas, several media options and various familiar tools with which to create my story. As I worked on both of my digital stories, the ideas dictated the directions and the story dictated the final selections used. Daniel Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind, stated, “We are our stories“. This became my story.

My personal digital storytelling experience started with one story, that was in me to tell. It ended with another story, that evolved the way most stories do. It begins with images, ideas, and thoughts that slowly untangle into a thread that creates the fabric of the story. My digital story is a ‘narrative’ in the truest sense, with a main character, evolving plot line, rising to a climax of discovery, and has an ending that brings the story to a conclusion. Understanding the nature of a narrative is one that many students struggle with, as did I when this project first started. After a ‘eureka’ moment (that also made me glad I asked the question), I knew what to do. As Young Turtle discovers, the answer was within me all along.

You’ll find my digital story here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/hjdew/digital-storytelling/

References

Pink, Daniel H. (2006) A whole new mind. New York: Berkeley Publishing Group, Penguin Books. Retrieved on July 10, 2011 from http://www.danpink.com/wnm.html

Image from http://4freephotos.com/index.php – Free photo # 820808c8369c053eceaf71070e248ff0

One Voice in the Crowd

This week’s topic in ETEC 565 is blogging and the wisdom of the crowd. I reflected, read and came across a wealth of voices in the crowd, each one sharing something important about the topic of blogging in educational settings.

This particular blog post, although done in 2004, is very relevant to the foundations of educational blogging – purpose and audience. (http://weblogg-ed.com/2004/04/13/)

The focus of the conversation on this blog was on the ultimate purpose and passion that true bloggers and blogging require. Unless there is that burning need to express a thought, opinion, idea or concept, the blog and blogger are doomed to failure. Will Richardson quotes Stephen Downes with the question – “Where is the locus of blogging? is it with the students or is it with the teacher?”

For my own work thus far, I would say the locus of blogging is with the teacher creating a contrived circumstance to provide a means for students to write in a public forum for the sake of sharing their writing publicly or with an authentic audience. For many educational blogs (listed in the ‘Links to School Bloggers‘) again, it is contrived for the sake of the exercise. Once the exercise is over, the blog is dropped.

To be true to the purpose of blogging, it needs to become a passionate endeavour of sustained energy with depth and breadth to the topic of discourse. Would my personal blog fit into that category? Probably not. Maybe not yet.

Will my words echo in the blogospher with the likes of
Will Richardson, (http://weblogg-ed.com/);
Stephen Downes (http://www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.htm);
Seth Godin (http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/)
Steve Hargadon (http://www.stevehargadon.com/) or even
Chris Kennedy (http://cultureofyes.ca/)?
Probably not. But that doesn’t mean my words shouldn’t be publicly published with passion and penache! (try that one 3 times quickly :))

That can also be said for our students, particularly those who feel strongly about a topic or interest. That’s where they pick up the pen (or keyboard) and begin to write. As found in this article written by Stephen Downes “Writers will write because they can’t not write.” (Bloggers will blog because they can’t not blog.) Their voice will shout out through their words and, like the ones from the ‘Fisch Bowl‘ be celebrated for their contribution. The marks and grades, at that point, would be a secondary consideration.

Another great posting about educational blogging also comes from Will Richardson (http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan04/richardson.shtml)

What we’re doing when we blog – written by Meg Hourihan is another interesting link to review. It was published through the O’Reily Web Development Center (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/06/13/megnut.html).

And one final connection to a blog about the best in educational blogging sites – http://oedb.org/library/features/top-100-education-blogs

So the voice of ONE can make a difference in the crowd.

It’s linking those voices together that leads you to the ones you want to listen to and that will lead to my next post – It’s All About the Tags!