I remember when I turned 30. It struck me that I was learning to drive the year that the current freshmen were born. I couldn’t dunk a basketball at will anymore (though I like to think I had the good sense not to). We had started a family and number two was on his way. And with the old 60’s mantra, “Never trust anyone over 30!” somewhere deep in the back of my mind, I realized there was a lot to celebrate and that the best was yet to come.
This year we find the International Society for Technology in Education at the same point in its life and you are invited to celebrate the past and look towards the future through digital storytelling. Bernajean Porter is kicking off the project with a free ISTE webinar on Friday Jan. 30th at 2 p.m. EST. Join us then and/or join in the ongoing conversation about the project on ISTE’s Storytelling Corps wiki. Here is the official description of tomorrow’s webinar:
NECC 2009 in Washington D.C. will mark thirty years of ISTE and ed tech history. Join ISTE and our new Digital Storytelling SIG for this free webinar that will introduce you to basic digital storytelling concepts and ISTE’s current storytelling project.
This project aims to collect the many stories detailing the journey of successes, challenges, lessons learned and celebrations of education technology making a difference for our kids. Participants will explore local, national and global benefits for gathering these stories; the difference between digital stories and storytelling; resources, ideas and strategies for getting started; and reflect on some examples of exemplar storytelling that leaves an enduring impact on viewers of all ages.
It may be a bit more time before all my impressions play themselves out in this blog but here are a couple of things that have stayed in the fore since I got home and got some rest.
Apple and Full Sail University had a digital storytelling reception where current Full Sail students had stations set up to walk attendees through the process. There were pre-production, writing, filming, and editing tables where attendees could build their own stories. Great stuff from a great program! I look forward to spending a few days there this summer during our Apple Institute. And they even highly recommended our buddy, Jason Ohler’s book on their handout of resources. But the highlight of the program for me was meeting a precocious 10 year old filmmaker. I’ll have more on Sam and his ideas about education after we’ve traded a couple of emails
Hall was a man of many presentations at FETC and many late nights getting them just right. His closing keynote was a riot as he showed what FETC 2012 would look like. From bandwidth the size of a municipal storm drain to video enhanced name badges and Twitter renamed “Jitter” because you now only have 6 characters to get your message across, he managed to be both hilarious and thought provoking.
And for those attendees in my FETC Makin’ Movies presentation (and anyone else who’s interested) here are the links to my resources:
Search “AFI” on DiscoveryEducationstreaming.com for the full set of Sean Astin narrated videos
The American Film Institute ScreenEd Program resources: afi.edu and screennation.afi.com
Marco Torres and students - www.sfett.com
Frank Guttler’s blog - LightsCameraLearn.com
Student videos and competitions for better living - GreatMindsFoundation.org Great digital storyteller and teacher - JasonOhler.com
Our Chicagoland TV educators and their students’ work - ctectv.org
BTW, exactly a year ago my grandson was kind enough to make his entrance right between FETC ‘08 and my return trip to Florida to keynote tech day for Brevard county. Happy birthday, Frankie!
Even if you’re not old enough to remember John Denver singing “Calypso,” that single surname in my title probably conjures up an image of the oceans along with awareness and sensitivity to their ecosystems. So I wasn’t very sure who I was going to encounter this morning when I helped Steve Dembo ustream Philippe (petit-fils* of Jacques) Cousteau’s pre-opening keynote Q&A with the media and selected educators. I thought it might be a stretch to post about him here just because I was on the video camera for the session. No problem! Not only did he actually mention the power of storytelling several times without any prompting from me, he is also investigating a project with the American Film Institute that does more than challenge students to take action - it also makes sure that that action is shared and quantified. I’m surprised we weren’t quick enough to give him a standing ovation when he said that it’s not that we can make a difference, but that everything we do does make a difference: “Action leads to awareness and awareness leads to learning.”
He was no less inspiring during his hour long keynote and then another two hours posing for pictures and signing autographs in the Discovery room. He laid the secret of his success squarely at the feet of both his family and a very special Jr. Hi teacher. They gave him the foundation and the confidence to become a storyteller/teacher who advocates for the care and study of what makes up almost 70% of the surface of our planet. He grew up with stories. And since his father died six months before he was born, it was through stories that he came to know his dad.
A tip of the hat to Scott Kinney for his fine keynote introduction. For the second year in a row, Scott did a great job mixing facts and humor to inform and warm up the several thousand educators in attendance.
*That’s grandson for the French challenged. And the language guy in me always did think it fortuitous that the family name ends in the French word for water.
Just a reminder, your 5th to 8th grade students can make science interesting and end up on television. Watch the Science Channel at 8pm ET and encourage your students to enter.
It is hard to believe we are already starting another cycle of the Discovery Education and 3M sponsored Young Scientist Challenge but here it is. And what better way to get your students enthused than to watch last year’s finalists at NASA’s Goddard Space Center in a 2 hour special this Sunday on the Science Channel (of course!) at both 8 and 11 p.m. EST (better check your local listings for exact times).
The 2009 challenge just opened this week and closes on May 20th. To qualify 5th to 8th grade students have to submit a 1-2 minute video online from the list of this year’s scientific topics based on practical innovations in your own house. Up to 51 semifinalists, one from each state and D.C., will be chosen by the panel of judges from Faraday Studios. Then 10 of those students will be invited to New York in the fall for an all expenses paid competition to determine the top young scientist. One nominating teacher will also be chosen to come to New York to help with the competition.
You can see biographies of last year’s finalists and get a feel for their work on the YSC site . You can also see some tips on submitting an entry video from Hall Davidson and me. Hall and I will be together most of next week and will look into updating those tips for this year’s competition. Though YSC emphasizes (and both Hall and I reiterate) that entry videos are not about the glitz, telling your story and making your point in a video should be as well crafted and structured as any written essay would be. Whether you use a still camera, cellphone or camcorder, there are simple visual grammar conventions to help bring the science home.
We interrupt this regularly scheduled webinar to bring you the first in a series of three webinars offered twice each day to help you keep that New Year’s resolution to get fit. We’ve bumped my originally slated presentation on sharing students’ videos on January 13th for “Checking Your Digital Pulse” offered at both 4pm and 7pm EST. I can use the prep time this week to polish up my FETC presentation a bit more and I can fill you in on the sharing/publishing sites in future blog posts. You, on the other hand, get a life improving opportunity to learn, be inspired and share over the next four weeks.
And if it’s Digital Storytelling that you want, we have one of the best examples of empowering students and letting their voices be heard in Dr. Tim Tyson. Hall was on a webcast panel, “Students as Producers,” with Tim 2 years ago during NECC Atlanta. Then Hall, Steve and I sat together on the last day of the conference and were energized by his closing keynote. You can register for Tim’s 7pm EST January 21st webinar “Taking a Look at the Classroom of Tomorrow Today: What Will It Look Like?” here.
Pulse picture photo credit - Finding a Pulse & Mouth-to-Mouth. Churchill Media. 1990. Discovery Education. 12 January 2009 <http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/>
…would still benefit from a visual representation that, of course, includes full context. I am marveling right now as I watch my two year old granddaughter acquire not only language but gestures. For example, when Hall Davidson was visiting just before Thanksgiving, she was chatting him up pretty good. I’m not sure any of us got more than a quarter of what she was saying, but she obviously didn’t want him to feel ignored. Just for fun Hall called her from his cell to mine and then she really got into high gear with her free hand gesticulating wildly. Even though nothing in the room had changed, she knows the message needs a little more oomph when you’re on the phone and can’t see each other. Ah, but I digress (which is par when I get going on the grandbabies). This post is not about my grandkids’ learning vocabulary, it’s about your SAT/ACT test takers!BrainyFlix has a video contest going through March 16th. Make a video illustrating one of the words on the SAT or ACT vocabulary lists and win one of the $600 in prizes or an iTunes download for every fifth entry (will that be DRM free now?)
What a great way and model to make words come alive! Imagine how quickly your students could teach each other words and spelling by acting them out in a no frills video.
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