I think I might finally understand digital storytelling and education
I attended the NMC 2008 summer conference last week at Princeton, NJ. There was a lot of sessions and discussion about digital storytelling. At first I was having a hard time wrapping my head around all the excitement over digital storytelling coming from the education realm. I understand the enthusiasm around digital storytelling in the democratic media sense. I can appreciate it as a art form. But why so much talk of the intersection of digital storytelling and education?
I got my answer on Friday afternoon. Joan Freedman and Michael Reese from John Hopkins did a "five minutes of fame" session where they talked about what they termed as a "humanities lab". They had a class about the Vietnam War era of American history which included a scheduled lab. The students had several multimedia assignments they had to complete during the semester. One assignment was to write and record a protest song. Another one was to create a propaganda poster. It hit me as I saw the examples of the students' work. These students were forging an emotional connection to the subject matter. They had to put themselves in the mindset of the people of the time, and to actually experience that time in some small measure. I could see that it was indeed a much deeper experience than the more purely intellectual experience of simply reading and writing about a subject. In some way they were actually touching the subject matter. This goes beyond simply translating an essay or report into a video. This was something else.
I saw many examples of video/audio/music assignments at the conference. Some were just a typical paper turned into a video. Some seemed to lack any real content, IMHO. But there is a third category.....
During Henry Jenkins closing plenary, he played the opening of the clip below. Check it out.
Imagine the relationship the person who wrote that song had to have to the novel in order to create it. Imagine how that relationship was deepened by that act of creation. Now, that video is not an example of a class assignment. And it may be beyond what we could reasonably expect a student to produce. But the idea still holds. This is about students forging a new relationship with the subject matter through the act of creation.
This has kinda totally changed my view on education. Maybe my view was far too limited to start with. But wat really is the point of education? Especially a humanities/liberal arts education? Isn't it really at its base about fostering relationships with learning in general, and flaming passion around the concepts of the subject matter in particular? How are these goals being met by current teaching practices? This is a topic I want to explore more.
Of course, it is generally difficult to assess this kind of student work, especially in any sort of standardize way.
Another issue is supporting students in this kind of media creation. The John Lennon Education tour bus (http://www.lennonbus.org/) was on hand at NMC. Its staff can help people with no experience with music or video create music and video. And of course, there is the Digital Commons at Penn State, which is pretty much the same thing, but not on wheels. So, I feel like this is more and more of a non-issue.
I have no idea if what I am writing here makes any sense, or if this has been blatantly obvious to you all for a while now. What do you think? Let me know.
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Brad manages the programming group in Education Technology Services.
It does make sense and it appears as though you have forged a deeper connection to the work we do here at ETS -- all this talk of Digital Expression around here the last couple of years is making more sense. We build the platforms that support faculty in their work ... and I can say we've taken some risks to get out in front of the coming wave of digital needs.
I am interested in hearing more from you and I loved the linked example above. Sounds like there were some new doors opened for you at NMC.
Interesting post, Brad. For the ethics & technology class I was a part of last semester, 7-10 minute video projects were the final assignment. Each group had to choose a technology, collect background research, go out and locate experts for interviews, develop a narrative, and make an argument with their final submissions. We held a debriefing the last day of class to see what the students thought about how the class had gone. Their 2 big statements on the video projects:
1. They are a pain to do; take a lot of time and effort, much more than anticipated.
2. Keep them; they are better than "another term paper." We learned more and it felt more personal to us.
We found these responses very interesting, and it's likely that the students' opinions were influenced by the type of content covered in the course. Nonetheless, it's not often that you hear people ask to be given the more difficult assignment.
As to your point about media creation, the bar for entry is certainly much lower today than it has been, even in the recent past. We scheduled one 45 minute tutorial session for the students with the Digital Commons folks, and that was the extent of the human help; the rest was simply provision of tools.
Digital storytelling has, for some time, been both a source of inspiration and frustration for me when it comes to education. On the one hand, I agree 100% with Brad that it represents what education should be. A means by which to build a deeper connection with a subject matter, in a way that means something to the learner. In a way that will stay with them long after they've forgotten factoids or reading assignments. To build on that, I think it gives you an opportunity to build your niche in a topic, something that is beyond important in the 1 instructor to 500 students scenario that is becoming all too common.
But that inevitably leads me to my frustration. Assessment. Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to meet with a business faculty member who is incredibly forward thinking. He has conceptualized and implemented some fantastic ideas to improve what was an extremely dry course. But at the end of the day, there is only so far he can go because he teaches 1,000 students with just a handful of TAs to help him. And so his ability to assess is limited by the hours in the day, and thus the ability of something to be automated via Angel or a scan tron sheet. True, not every class in higher education is this way, but they are not getting any smaller either.
How do we teach instructors in every field to accept these new forms of academic expression and make it practical for them to do so? This is our next challenge in moving through the digital story of education. I can't help but think the community is part of the answer...
Great post Brad
Hi Brad,
I mentioned this one to a few others around campus, but here is a great way to pull digital projects, blogs, etc. into a timeline: http://www.dipity.com/
Nikki
Very inspiring! Thanks a lot for the great post, Brad.
One thing worth asking, though, is how crucial the "digitality" is to deepen the relationship between the students and the subject matter? Would, say, a non-recorded stage performance, or a well-planned street demonstration, have less effects to the students?
It seems the role of the "digitality" here is more on the transmission and archiving function, which would actually impact more people over longer period of time. If that's the case, then the digitality is not a revolution but simply part of the long progress of things becoming easier.
Take printed books for example. When they were carving in the caves, there was only one non-movable copy. When they advanced to writing on tree barks, that one copy is lighter and can be passed around different readers. When they advanced to writing on silk, the amount of information that can be carried increased. When they started to print, the copying capability increased. And when ball pens came out, people was able to annotate when they read. This goes on and on and we have Kindle today.
However, back in the cave day, they probably used a stone to cross off some pictures they didn't like (a way of annotating, or commenting); if the author reacts to that big cross, then there is interaction (intellectual or physical).
What I'm trying to figure out is whether students build deeper relationship with the subject relies on the medium or their personal attitude. If the medium _is_ the primary factor, shouldn't we see more students take their homework more seriously than those 20 years ago, because now they have easy access to word processors and the internet? If the medium does not guarantee a deeper inspiration, statistically, then would the introduction of the digitality in the education world simply part of the overall trend?
I don't have real world information to verify the assumption for either side. Besides, I don't think it's realistic to treat the two factors (external vs. personal) independent of each other. However, I do think constant checking of the boundary between the form and the content would help educators and learners understand what approach works and why, for specific students in specific time.