Digital Narratives

Visual Literacy - metalanguage

2011-07-06T09:32:00.003+10:00

Using metalanguage affords direct links between the elements in images and how they construct meaning (Thanks to Kress and Van Leeuwen for the language).

Back from IFTE conference in Auckland

2011-04-23T10:11:00.002+10:00

One wonders why a person would put themselves through the trauma and exhaustion of nominating themselves for both the delivery of a workshop and a paper at a conference. Over-achiever? Perhaps, but I think if you love something it is important to spread the word about why and what you love. English teachers are presumed to be a stuffy lot and I'm sure there are some who fit that role well. (As a school student I think I had one teacher who wasn't stuffy!) But when you hear them talk about their subject it becomes pretty obvious they love it. The words, the books, the social nature of the English classroom.

At the moment my biggest concern for subject English is the notion that we can quantify, through league tables, and standards what English can teach them. English is one of the humanities which is far more complicated than measuring the uses of a literary grammar. I am astounded at the retrograde discussions in the newspapers (an archaic text if ever there was one) about returning to some halcyon days of education where grammar made the world a better place. It didn't. I learned grammar at school and teaching it in isolation for a test designed to marginalise students seems so sad. Anyway when I process what's happening in my mind about where we should be moving in English I'll write more.

It was a good conference.

Blogging for teaching digital narratives

2011-02-20T08:03:00.008+11:00

So blogging for teaching:

Blogging is a great way not only to reflect on the aim and purpose of your teaching but also for students to demonstrate their learning. There are, of course, some parameters that you'd need to consider.

1. Be clear about the purpose of the blog e.g. if your writing about digital narratives, and what's good about them as a form of expression, express the need for serious consideration about what you include... (in this form of narrative keep the number of pics to 20, number of words 250 and the music appropriate and original). Links between the different modes is key! (I actually think this is where most meaning is made - in the liminal spaces between the pictures, words and music.)

2. Clearly establish (if you're using blogging for education) what sort of language you'd expect to include - and if you're the blogging demonstrate that language as well as personal opinion. Let's say you are blogging about digital narratives (lol not to be repetitive!) Using words like orientation, contrast, complexity, resolution as well as the technical language for the ICT you're using is imperative.

3. The basis of all good digital narratives is evoking a response in the audience... identify the type of emotional responses you're aiming for in your blog. Here I think the idea of taking an emotional journey is important if you start out bleakly go somewhere good, and vice versa.

4. Blogs are also important to express the things that fail... so let's say you're writing a blog about something that didn't match your expectations then say so... what failed and if you figure out particular points in the narrative that didn't work and conversely any elements that were successful is always useful reflection.

5. If you're writing about failing also remember that you need to be able to learn from and move on from failure. So try and include comments, expressions and wishes about how things might improve in the future. These expresses about moving forward and upward are really important!

So here's an example of what my last digital narrative experience felt like in the classroom.

Instructional vid on how to make digital narratives

The class read a number of poems about marginalisation - some of the poems were lyrics from songs. The aim was that the students were going to construct a visual text to interpret their take on the poem/song. I thought the aim was pretty clear. (Haha!) I realised that the aim was mine and although I stated it and wrote it on the assessment sheet, how 16 year olds interpret what I say isn't always a direct match!

Had to adjust... So I selected a number of poems and distributed them to the students. We went through the process of using the technology (because we're a mac school we use iMovie, but if you're using PCs Photostory 3 is just as easy) and looked at some good digital stories.

A couple of things we learned were to use large photographs and it is always better to use photographs that the students take themselves rather than appropriate (steal) them from the internet - unless you use wikimedia commons stuff which is copyright free. (This actually works well because the students actually physically express themselves in ways that directly relate to the emotions in the poetry). It is also good to construct your own music using sound clouds or garage band... this way the issues of copyright don't loom.

One of the most difficult things to learn about is how to create drama through contrast, but I think generally because of the culture of youtube there are heaps of examples and students (and even some adults) have an intuitive understanding about what manipulates an audience.

Example of an interpretation of a poem... in digital narrative form

It was pretty important to talk about the bleakness of isolation and marginalisation and the ways in which we can overcome that dark place where loneliness and strangeness pervades our experience - so our next unit will be on positive and uplifting poetry... maybe about the natural world...

An interest side bar... Len Unsworth, Angela Thomas and AnneMaree O'Brien appeared on Catalyst the other night about digital storytelling and learning>> future classrooms. The program they used in the program was Kahootz.

Thinking about schooling and ennui

2010-04-18T19:15:00.005+10:00

I learned a new word this week 'ennui'. In the context of education it means that even kids who are good at English ‘...don’t like what they learn' but at the moment there seems to be a number of things converging for me with regard to digital narratives in teaching and learning. I really believe we learn heaps of stuff through storytelling; culturally, socially, educationally. I know people talk about oral traditions as though they are transient and somehow not sophisticated but in terms of understanding the world I think using narrative is key. Why do students dislike what they learn, why can't play (making stories using digital technologies) work to alleviate this resistance to learning. In my experience (all anecdotal of course) students respond enthusiastically to making digital narratives, even it if means reflecting on their learning about literature.

I've also been thinking lately about how we learn... and we learn deeply and meaningfully through association. For example if you give me a mathematical equation to learn unless I have something to associate it with, something upon which I can build, it hardly means anything to me. Further to that learning needs to be personalised. That has something to do with association but it also has a lot to do with relevance. So, you may ask, what has all this to do with digital narratives.

Digital narratives use personal associations to make sense to the people who make them. They link to context and concept and text when they are constructed in English as a reflection to texts and about texts and ideas. They can be playful, they can be serious, they can be a whole pile of things.

This sort of sums up what I've been thinking (with the help of some other dudes and dudettes:

How we teach, in the 21st century, is as critical to the learning process as what we teach. Professor Carey Jewitt, Institute of Education (IoE) University of London, writes that ‘…the ways in which something is represented shape both what is to be learned, …and how it is to be learned.’ (Jewitt 2008). She further identifies three key areas, which are most affected by technology’s impact on education: including knowledge as curriculum; learning and pedagogy; and literacy across the curriculum. (Jewitt 2006).

Literary study competes with a broad range of texts in secondary school English (Jewitt, 2006; Kress, 2003; New London Group, 2000) but remains the subject’s foundation. As a facilitator for the English Teacher’s Association NSW (ETA) National Curriculum forum in Armidale (April 2010) discussions highlighted increasing concerns, that the study of literature, grammar and multiliteracies in senior secondary contexts, appear inherently dichotomous and oppositional. Professor Len Unsworth (Unsworth 2008) extends similar concerns, as he asserts that ‘teachers do not feel confident or comfortable in the world of digital multimedia.’ While the Stage 6 syllabus ‘encourages students to reconsider and refine meaning and to reflect on their own processes of responding, composing and learning’ (BoS 1999) it is imperative that teachers also position themselves as reflexive learners in 21st century.

An Australian study makes three observations in regard to digital technologies which assert that teachers focus on skills that are already possessed by students, relatively few teachers motivate students and enrich learning (by developing multiliteracy skills) and teachers, when using digital technologies in their classroom, fail to focus on ‘higher order thinking and reasoning skills’. (Kimber & Wyatt-Smith 2009). These higher order skills link with the attainment of ‘higher-order social, aesthetic and cultural literacy’ (BoS NSW 1999) where the ‘study of English enables students to recognise and use a diversity of approaches and texts to meet the growing array of literacy demands.’ (BoS NSW 1999) At this time, (during the construction of a National Curriculum) it is imperative that notions of ‘deficit teaching’ (an idea appropriated from Halliday’s writing on grammar) (Halliday 2002), where the trepidation that teachers recount while using multiliteracy contexts in their classrooms, be addressed.

Students in Stage 6 English in NSW, are required to ‘learn to evaluate the effectiveness of processes and technologies’ (BoS 1999) and it is imperative that teachers develop skill sets to support this and future learning. ‘Monitoring and assessing the most appropriate technologies and processes for particular purposes of investigating, clarifying, organising and presenting ideas in personal, social, historical, cultural and workplace contexts’ (BoS 1999) (while a student learning outcome) (BoS 1999, [9.3]) will inform the study tour so that the tenants of teaching through multiliteracies will be evaluated.

The key tenants of teaching literature and grammar, with regard to digital narrative are the:

• Use of multimodal resources in pedagogy
• Implications for literacy and grammar acquisition as emphasis increases on digital text production
• Links between multiliterate pedagogical practices and literature course delivery in senior secondary English classrooms.

Plot? What Plot?

2008-09-20T15:01:00.006+10:00

Is there a plot against English literature, Australian literature, the values of the print media? Miranda Devine, in today's Sydney Morning Herald, English Teachers have lost the plot, slags the ETA and asserts that Sophie Masson's sons didn't enjoy English for their HSC. This article hardly shows a considered response to a complex syllabus and an even more complex subject. Subject English has a number of components, it is not just the study of literature. It is fundamentally a subject which explores how texts make meaning. And yes texts can be printed, visual or multi-modal.

Maniacal laughter follows...

According to the article, the English curriculum has become so broad, for many teachers, and students, the joy of English literature appears to have been eroded. I find it extraordinary that Devine's assertion supposes students can complete the HSC Advanced or Extension English courses without reading! Both these courses require detailed reading from a wide range of texts, including the bastions of English literature: Shakespearean Drama. So let's just support the notions that Shakespeare is civilising, Australian texts are important in nation building and every other contemporary text has no merit or value! (Oh, by the way I'm using hyperbole purposefully here!) The fundamental element that stops students enjoying the study of English is the Higher School Certificate exam - prescriptive, archaic and stress inducing for both teachers and students. This is the cause of the lack of creativity in the English curriculum.

It is a simple thing to lambast an organisation like the English Teachers' Association but Devine and other pundits of 'English is literature campaign' (and predominantly Australian literature at that) need to look at how the world is changing, how information has changed and the ways in which creativity is learned and taught in English.

Trundling through Web 2.0 for teaching

2008-08-26T06:54:00.011+10:00

Time clatters by... I've constructed a wiki as part of our school Professional Development day on 29 August. It has been pretty quick really and not too many hiccoughs except for the forums... I think I've nearly figured it out and the materials are all available through the wiki which means the PD can be used all over the place and revisited, if of course teachers are interested. Still struggling with the forums...Arrrrggggghhhhh! But I will put on my manga attack expression and overcome any difficulties!

Pulling it together

2008-08-20T03:32:00.005+10:00

I've been creating (a bit like a maniac) a range of different resources for teachers and students for 2009 HSC Area of Study Belonging. You can access the links in the dot pointed bits below:

* a Webquest using Shaun Tan's picture books and other stuff,
* a pathfinder (resources include YouTube ones - so if your school doesn't allow access to YouTube the videos include Bra Boys Trailer, We are One - Telstra Advertisement, a show from SBS on Sudanese immigrants in Australia, the opening sequence of Friends and some others,
* a link to some Google Docs presentations and teaching resource I've been working on. The teaching resource is the one below so don't waste your time checking out the link if you're already looked at the Analysis of Bra Boys Trailer.

Check out Google Docs - they provide a great way to collaborate using online documents.

If anyone does use the resources: I'd like feedback to see if they have proved useful to English teachers out there. Cheers.

Analysis of Bra Boys Trailer for Belonging

2008-08-08T12:01:00.005+10:00

Working on the concept of belonging for next year's HSC English students and teachers.

CeltX

2008-08-06T15:42:00.001+10:00

I've been playing with the CeltX application over the last couple of days. Such an easy thing to use, quick download and have used it in my Year 10 Drama class as they realise a group devised performance they've been working on. Looks good to me. If anyone has tried it out and have any results that are sensational, could you let me know please?

Anyone for Croquet?

2008-08-02T09:58:00.001+10:00

This is a really cool open source thingy - which seems to provide educators and students a whole range of different opportunities to explore aspects of the world, real and imagined.

The Webquest is done!

2008-07-31T07:50:00.004+10:00

I've completed the webquest on How do we belong?
REPRESENTATIONS OF BELONGING - using Shaun Tan's books as stimulus. Good links with the quest and the link to the approved and finished quest is HERE

Comments and feedback are greatly appreciated.

New webquest - still under construction.

2008-07-26T22:43:00.008+10:00

The image above comes from Shaun Tan's book The Red Tree and it is called 'Nobody understands me'.

I've been working on a new webquest for NSW HSC English students for 2009. It is based on the Area of Study, Belonging. It is still in the process of being constructed but any feedback would be appreciated. The webquest is called How do we belong? Representations of Belonging. It is based on the concept of belonging but includes exercises on visual analysis and the construction of digital narratives for the purpose of assessment in the Senior English classroom.

It uses four of Shaun Tan's texts as stimulus including The Arrival, The Red Tree, The Lost Thing and Tales from Outer Suburbia. The major assessment task, within the webquest, requires students to create a digital narrative about the ways they feel like they belong, using images, video, sounds and of course their own stories.

Check it out and drop me a line and let me know what you think about it.

The abacus: digital technology?

2008-07-15T21:51:00.008+10:00

John Palfrey et.al. in their forthcoming book Born Digital suggest that "...not all people born during a certain period of history (say, after the advent of BBSes) are Digital Natives. Not everyone born today lives a life that is digital in every, or indeed any, way. For starters, only about 1 billion of the 6.7 billion people in the world have regular access to the supposedly “World Wide Web.” In other cases, young people we are meeting choose to have little to do with digital life." They further link digital natives with those who have multiple identities, identities through which these natives apparently negotiate seamlessly.

For students who don't identify as digital natives, in secondary school classrooms, the implication are real and serious:
1. teacher assumptions that all students are natives in the digital world are flawed
2. the inequities for students who are immigrants grow exponentially as students travel through secondary school, they might become digital refugees
3. students need a range of skills so that they can adapt to reading digital landscapes successfully (are their base skills for students who don't engage with digital worlds?)

...now for something completely different, ad break for next year's work.

2008-07-13T10:41:00.009+10:00

This is a very brief look at one way PowerPoint and iMovie can be used to construct quick and easy resources for the classroom.

Note embedded within the ppt are some terms for developing visual grammar as well as ideas that might assist conceptual understanding of belonging.

It looks a bit small; for advertising that's okay, but you get the general idea... I hope!

There is a pathfinder attached to this blog where I'm collecting resources for the Higher School Certificate 2009, Area of Study, BELONGING

Blogging for education

2008-07-13T00:16:00.006+10:00

SIX ways to use your blog to teach
1. Post and share resources and materials (with teachers and students)
2. Host online discussions
3. Create class newsletters and replace your school newsletter
4. Give feedback about classwork, received feedback about successful (or otherwise) lessons and units
5. Integrate all kinds of multi-media in a fully functioning webpage
6. Organise, organise, organise

These points, slightly adapted, came from edublog - Search some of the edublogs, they are mind blowing! Here's an example: Thinking 2.0

Changing to learn, learning to change

2008-07-13T00:00:00.002+10:00

We used this video (or part of it in our presentation). It supports my notion that schools (as they stand) are anachronistic. What might be alternative arrangements for schools?

The investment (history as well as money) in schools, that are divided into purpose built classrooms, is enormous. Now it is time to reinvest and reinvent the ways schools look and feel.

iStories, DigiStories...

2008-07-12T18:25:00.007+10:00

There are some cool authoring tools for telling stories...here are just a couple. Kahootz is a 3D authoring tool.

Now the dust has settled.

2008-07-12T11:38:00.006+10:00

Sigh! A frost and the early morning temp settled around -8 degrees C brings me back down out of 'away from home mode'. Still the buzzing is there...the excitement of possibility.

My memory of school really isn't that much different from my experience of school as a teacher. The heirarchy is still there, the notion that conformity is valued is still there and the inequity within and between schools is most definitely there.

I went to a private school in Sydney and it was considered to be quite prestigious. How it could be prestigious when there were no boys there seemed to me to be a mystery, but that's what people said.

I didn't like the one-size fits all notion then and I hate it now. I think stories, from teachers, support staff, administators and students is one area where the inequities that seem inherent in institutions like schools can begin to be broken down.

A first effort... pretty bad, but it'll get better

2008-07-11T16:11:00.005+10:00

I'm working on some of the ideas presented at the conference, particularly about digital narratives. I was reading some of Daniel Meadows' material from his website and he suggests that the stories should be about 'big' things. While the video in the blog isn't about a momentous event, in terms of the world, for me, and my three friends it was a pretty big deal.
I'll get better at editing.

Germinating an idea

2008-07-10T21:40:00.002+10:00

See... still smiling sitting with Shaun Tan!
What's good about digital narratives
* democratic as opposed to autocratic (like many classrooms even in 2008)
* human - good for the humanities of which English is a part

Concerns
* the production values alter according to technology
* might be inequitable if schools don't have the equipment

Teaching through digital stories

2008-07-10T16:55:00.007+10:00

(Note: what you see here is a picture of me but it is not a digital story).

See the smile! I'm wearing it now, again! Why you might ask...

I have had a massive brain explosion and have begun to think about some stuff that was ignited at a recent conference in South Australia, that I went to, on Stories, places, spaces: literacy and identity.

It was a conference for English teachers, which I know sounds like a massive yawn, but no...it wasn't. (By the way I'm an English teacher, to give you some context). It, the conference, was stimulating and made me recognise why the humanities are what I enjoy teaching. It is about being human...hardly a revelation for many, but sometimes teachers become jaded and frayed around the edges and forget about humanities and humanness.

Two really exciting things happened at the conference:

Firstly, Daniel Meadows presented a keynote lecture on digital stories as a means of democratic expression. The notion that, a two minute, two hundred and fifty word narrative, constructed through and supported by digital media, can evoke, and suggest, a poetry of connectivity, is very exciting.

Secondly, met, talked to and got thrilled (again!) about Shaun Tan's work and the humanity I feel when I read it.

A third, more terrifying than exciting, thing that happened at the conference was a 90 minute workshop presentation that some colleagues and I presented... That workshop was about teaching using multi-modality and multi-literacies, which is really just teaching using pictures, words, sound, digital moving images and the space of virtuality... der, the internet stuff, like wikis, online classrooms and other stuff.

We are all pretty relieved. We survived. It is a far more daunting thing to stand up in front of 50 adult English teachers and talk to them about teaching and learning than it is to teach teenagers about English. But alive we remain! The feedback, thus far, about our workshop has been positive. Watch this space for any developments that errr... develop from the workshop.

Okay, that said...here's my idea, or rash of ideas, or rash ideas...
I want to figure out if teachers can teach as well as learn using digital narratives... like teach about making narratives, but also about teaching and learning through using technologies (ICTs) while making their own digital narratives. (Germ of an idea and I feel some sleeplessness will keep the germination fidgeting away at the back of my brain). You might notice that when I get excited about something I use hyperbole, exaggeration, overstatement and the like. lol

If a picture paints a thousand words, what then are the possibilities for students, and teachers, to enrich their expressive, their creative purposeful texts to demonstrate what they know about stuff? How creative can we be? How many kids stories can be told? (...as well as reflections of teacher experiences)

I hate the idea that school is prescriptive and the work teachers force students to do is meaningless and separate from their real lives. So buzz, buzz...I'm thinking!