Sunday, March 24, 2013

My Intro Movie

Hey folkers, here's my video.
I built it on my macbook air, using iPhoto and iMovie.  I had some issues with gathering all the photos I needed from their different locations and saving them properly, but it came out well in the end.  Actually, I'll let you be the judge of that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5O0GHIeg9Q

Chapter 1

It took a while, but Ohler finally got to a salient point for me, his revelation #14 had the most relevance to me.  He proposes that combining storytelling and critical thinking defines an important pedagogical frontier.  I took that to mean that teachers will have to adapt the way we use storytelling and show the difference in entertainment and personal critical thinking.

I also like how he says, digital stories combine traditional and emerging literacies in engaging reluctant students.   Like many educators today, I believe that students must have the skills necessary to recognize, evaluate, and apply the persuasive techniques of media to succeed in the digital world.

I’m a fan of how author states that technology doesn’t make teachers obsolete. It in fact makes them more valuable than ever, as students need guidance and wisdom to use technology with care and direction in their stories that provide clarity and humanity.

Chapter 2
I appreciate the real classroom applications that be used by teacher in multiple subjects.  The three reflective discussion questions provide a clear outline for teachers to use for their DST assessment needs.  Meaning I like that teachers can know if this project is going to be useful to the students.

I also like the wide but stringent use of defining your digital story as a metaphor and using that metaphor throughout your story.  I ties into a couple of the points from chapter 1, in that new age digital story is connected to traditional story and teachers can use the comfort of familiarity to instruct the new pedagogy needed today.

Ohler’s strongest points come from the ways to enhance active critical thinking, I like when students learn when they are not necessarily aware they are learning.  This shows them that learning is an ongoing and continual process.  Ohler suggests using story vs. report at equal frequency and passive viewing and active viewing as well.  It’s up to the teacher to set the clear objectives forth to the students and I like the examples of how to actually build a project.


Chapter 3
The idea of using DST as a content methodology seems like a no brainer to me and if the proper circumstances exist in implementing the projects I’d like to see it take place in my social science classroom. 

Maintain technology standards are also important in the classroom today and equally obvious for teacher implementation.  It almost goes without saying that, technological concepts, productivity and professional practice are interconnected with teacher technical proficiency.  Throughout Imet and with the guidelines developed by ISTE I hope to show the proficiency that is needed in today’s classroom.

Lastly, the narrative used in DST offers a helpful perspective from which to view the extension of text into the digital domain and the expansion of concepts like reading, writing and grammar that have enhanced development capacities.  I’m in full agreement that web 2.0 is a highly narrative environment. 

6 comments:

  1. You mentioned, "I believe that students must have the skills necessary to recognize, evaluate, and apply the persuasive techniques of media to succeed in the digital world" I agree. Today being able to do these things is important, but I believe it will only become more important for our students to have these skills in the future.
    You also mentioned, "I like when students learn when they are not necessarily aware they are learning." So true. In reality they are learning far more than they know when they interact with technology. Being able to guide them is a great goal.
    Lastly, you mentioned your social science classroom. I think DST would be amazing in this realm! Being able to create a storyline and produce it would be a great way to learn social science.

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  2. Thanks for reply, i kept it minimalistic so as not to raise the bar too high (ha ha). The girl with me and world series trophy is at at&t park, shes my daughter and the boy paintballin is my son. The other idiots are my golf buddies.

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  3. Blog response: Josh, you say that you like Ohler’s assertion that “ technology doesn’t make teachers obsolete. It in fact makes them more valuable than ever, as students need guidance and wisdom to use technology with care and direction in their stories that provide clarity and humanity.”
    I agree with this. I think, though Olhler seems a bit from another time to me, this idea is what makes his message current. I believe teachers, rather than avoiding technology could embrace it and utilize DST as assignments that might free them up to enjoy (specific to H/SS) the interpretive products students might create such as culminating activities from “doing” history by interpreting primary and secondary sources. This way the teachers would not have to dread grading a bunch of five paragraph essays. I think the only caveat here would be that students would have to make sure they were telling a historical story and not just a story for entertainment. Again—that would take the teacher’s guidance.

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    1. Thanks for your reply Letty, that's what I took Ohler to be saying. I didnt see him as being on the other side, I'll look more closely to his perspective as I'm doing this weeks reading.

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  4. “I’m a fan of how author states that technology doesn’t make teachers obsolete. It in fact makes them more valuable than ever, as students need guidance and wisdom to use technology with care and direction in their stories that provide clarity and humanity.”
    I agree with this a lot. It is a perspective though that requires teachers who want to embrace technology. I think that might be the catch for some folks.
    “Ohler’s strongest points come from the ways to enhance active critical thinking, I like when students learn when they are not necessarily aware they are learning.”
    Yeah I have been debating this with my fiancée. I feel 100% in agreement with the author and have been using the Harlem Shake meme as an example. So harlem shake is stupid popular at the moment which is fine since it is more fun to watch than planking, and I am teaching distance equals rate times time in my class. Well what if rate were the rate you were dancing? Then the more energetically you danced, the farther you would travel. And of course harlem shake videos always have one person kick it off before the beat drops, so you can actually display a time element. So there is some real potential here to do some totally creative stuff with a relevant cultural thing that might actually teach kids much more about a subject than just grinding problems.
    I guess the only concern I have, is that the focus of so much of the current testing is on whether you can grind out problems. A group of kids who can create the video I described probably knows a lot more about the meaning of d=rt than a kid who knows how to shove numbers into a formula and solve for a variable. However, the kid who does nothing but practice d=rt word problems probably tests much higher than my group of dancers at least until common core comes out and is fully implemented by districts.

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  5. I liked the comment about "the narrative used in DST offers a helpful perspective from which to view the extension of text into the digital domain and the expansion of concepts like reading, writing and grammar that have enhanced development capacities," and "Ohler’s strongest points come from the ways to enhance active critical thinking, I like when students learn when they are not necessarily aware they are learning."

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