Digital Storytelling

“Editing is sometime called a story’s final re-write,” so says good buddy and fellow Wilkes instructor, Frank Guttler. He has some insightful thoughts and examples on what creative editing can do on his blog. “Mary Poppins” as a horror flick? Check out his most recent post over at “lights, camera, learn!“

I just found out that the annual AFI/Discovery Channel SilverDocs Documentary Festival is accepting 13-19 year olds’ work. The entry has to be in by April 1st, under 10 minutes and posted on YouTube. TeenDocs will show the top three entries at the festival this June at the AFI SilverDocs Theatre (right down the street from Discovery headquarters). Documentaries are a great format for your students to emulate for their class projects.

Just where did all those words at the beginning of “Star Wars” movies go? Do they spend eternity scrolling through space? What if they eventually hit earth? Local area student and movie fan, Bill Parker, has his own answer to that and it has caught the eye of more than 500,000 YouTube viewers (HD + SD) and our suburban Chicago newspaper along with the Associated Press.

I guess I’d better get to work updating my Special F/X post from my recent ICE Conference presentation. What will your students do with the tools to unleash their imaginations?

No, not the Julius Caesar kind. Nor that old Chicago rock band. I’m talking about how much time your students have to make a short video illustrating the meaning of one of the words on the ACT/SAT vocabulary list for the latest round of BrainyFlix fun. The best video will win $600 for their middle or high school. And this is a good time to do it before you become irascible as we approach that annual financial conundrum ending on the ides of April.

Of course, you don’t have to look at the calendar or enter a contest to have students make short videos illustrating vocabulary, formulas, concepts, etc. and teach each other in a memorable way.

This is the 201st anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth and you’re probably celebrating it by anticipating Valentine’s Day with your students. Monday will be the official Presidents’ Day celebration with the usual day off or institute or something along those lines. “When I was a kid” in the middle of the last century, when there were far fewer school holidays. I seem to remember having both Washington and Lincoln’s birthday off. In any event, lest Abe fade into ancient history here in the Land of Lincoln, the state of Illinois erected the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and museum a few years ago. I finally managed a visit there last spring during our state-wide student showcase for legislators. Wow, was I impressed! I didn’t think my state was capable of putting together such a great, multimedia learning experience.

There is an almost 180 degree theater that immerses you in Lincoln’s life and times, and seems to be narrated by an onstage host. In another theater you feel like you are in the back room archives visiting with a real librarian/archivist who makes history come alive through the words and relics of the Civil War era; then magically turns out to be those words and relics himself. Finally, and most “simply’ considering the other experiences, you walk through a TV control room where the late Tim Russert is hosting a look at the television commercials that might have played out during Lincoln’s run for the presidency. What a fantastic way for students (and any citizen) to understand the moods of the day and compare them to the political ads and issues we have now! That, of course, is my ulterior motive for this post. Even if you can take your students to experience something like the Lincoln museum, why not indulge in some anachronicity?  Let them create their own news broadcasts, interviews and historical recreations to make the past live and achieve a richer level of understanding.

And happy birthday to my younger sister and fellow grandparent who always claimed we were off for her birthday.

Photo: Paul Fuqua. “Lincoln, Abraham.” unitedstreaming: http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com

We probably all associate a favorite quote to people we listen to and read. For better or worse. “Well intentioned paperwork” is my favorite from Jason Ohler. He uses it to describe most of our “traditional” assignments and assessments. I bring this up because I am beginning to teach my 9th section of Digital Storytelling for the Discovery Education/Wilkes U. masters program. Students have begun to post their first reflections on this week’s assigned textbook reading from Jason’s Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity. I highly recommend that book to you too if you are looking for a good read on digital storytelling that pretty much covers all the bases in a very practical way. And while I look forward to 7 weeks of reflections from my grad students that begin something like, “As Ohler says on Pg….,” I anxiously anticipate even more the videos that will “resonate” with their classmates and eventually get their own students resonating.

Nothing very sinister here. That’s just the deadline  in the latest round of BrainyFlix vocabulary videos contest. Winners split the $600 Grand Prize with their school and anybody (up to the first 900) who submits 3 videos gets an iTunes gift card. This is a great way to visualize vocabulary in any language as well as concepts in other subjects.

And, hey! The Discovery/3M Young Scientist Challenge has just opened up for this school year. There will be a lot more on this later but you can start by checking out this year’s video application topics. The deadline for 5-8th grade students to submit their videos is May 27th, 2010.

What’s Your Issue Foundation’s mission “is to provide a unique national platform for young adults to propose creative solutions to some of our nation’s most important challenges and for that voice to be heard, honored, and acted upon by leaders in government, the media, the private sector, and the nonprofit world.” They’ve just opened the 2010 competition asking 14-24 year olds to use their video AND musical voices to identify and solve problems facing us all. The “next generation of leaders and social entrepreneurs” is encouraged to share their view in a video or a song approximately 3 minutes long. I don’t see a deadline yet and there are some tutorials to come, so keep checking their site for updates.

The Great Minds Foundation is starting the year with its newest challenge to create a 2-5 minute video on something that “you’d like your peers to be more aware of (such as anti-smoking, anti-drugs, anti-violence, or random acts of kindness, etc.)” This is open to  high school and college students. You have until June 1st, 2010. And there are cash prizes. BUT it’s worth checking the website just to look over the rules. They provide good ground rules for any school video project.

I have always felt that one of the recurring gifts of teaching was hearing from or about former students who were successful (I even taught and coached with a few). I got a bit of that feeling Sunday morning when I was thumbing through the USA Weekend  insert in our Sunday paper and Spotted the Pittsburgh Steelers’ #34 at the top of a page. In my school, we all knew Rashard Mendenhall was destined for the big time after his first varsity season as a sophomore. And I was fortunate enough to also see his creative side whenever he came into my multimedia lab to work on a video project for a class. What I learned in Sunday morning’s paper is that Rashard (along with a few other prominent athletes) is also a poet and he plans on writing a book. With all the negative publicity pro athletes manage to generate, it’s great to see the positive, less sensational side get some press - especially when it’s someone you know.