Digital Storytelling Intro - CEdO530 Wk 1

Looking at the introductory information from this first week of digital storytelling, I’m anticipating a class that is both presenting brand new information as well as refining techniques I’ve previously learned. The work will really come when I start revamping presentations in my classroom based on the concepts in Presentation Zen as most of my current examples are glorified overheads. I can however think of a few of my lessons and lectures that really do follow the simplicity concept and involve more storytelling than actual lecture notes when explaining to my students. For example, when it comes time to talk about jellyfish, I use a few pictures of my snorkeling dives in the Bahamas and tell the students about their former classmates getting stinging jellies in their bathing suits. I use these stories to introduce the structure of the “stingers” that jellyfish and related critters use. Now I’ll just need to figure out the storytelling “angle” for more of my lessons and really put them together.
A think that refining what I’ve already learned and attempted will come with the digital storytelling. I’ve had lots of experience with telling family histories and stories in digital form in recent years. A few summers ago, my two aunts, my mother and I were asked to create a presentation telling the family history in the Fish Creek area. We wrote a script, scanned photos into powerpoint, found music, I dressed in my grandfather’s fishing slickers, etc. and we presented. The only problem was that the story never held unless the four of us were there together to tell it and the powerpoint became a useless collage of both historical and recent photos without a purpose. My mom and I were convinced that it would have to become a movie and the following summer we spent countless hours putting it together as a digital one – I say movie and not digital story because it had many, many stories incorporated as it followed the history back seven generations. What resulted however was a different kind of family heirloom that has preserved many of the stories told to my mother’s and my generation by our past relatives. It is also a way to share the history with my children and other future generations.
I'd like to use this class to take what I already know about digital storytelling and apply it to practical use in the classroom making my lessons and "lectures" much more engaging and memorable. Hopefully this will spark the interest of my students more than I've been able to previously.