Digital Storytelling, Week 1

Wow, what a first week of class. I am very excited to learn about this topic of digital storytelling and how it can influence my future presentations and/or family. This week we read the Presentation Zen and I learned a great deal about how to better my future presentations to make them more effective (which is always a goal of mine), but also to really feel that my students may actually retain the information presented.

The first part of the book discussed how the use of PowerPoint has been a negative on many presentations around the world. The use of this program, or really any slide-share program, must be thought out carefully and deliberately. Each presentation is different so if a presentation does not need such technology, don't complicate the issue by adding it.

We also read about digital storytelling in the book DigiTales. This book is a great tool as it discusses how each one of us can tell our own stories, and keep them in a digital world...forever. I think of my Nana, who is approaching 90 years this upcoming year, and how awesome it would be to document her life growing up in Minnesota and joining the Marine Corps. Moving to Hawaii and meeting my grandfather, who was also a Marine, eventually falling in love, having 5 children and eventually settling down in Wisconsin. Digital storytelling is all about collecting those memories and documenting them, including printed photo's, documents, or other stories, and putting them all together into one presentation. What a great opportunity.

We also learned a great deal about how presentations online can be great stories, and some not so great. I viewed a few sites from the digital storytelling site and found some interesting sites that I would not ordinarily search. These are still great tools, even if just to learn what not to do.

Great week, looking forward to the rest.

The Interactives

I really enjoyed "The Interactive" idea located on the learner.org web site. I worked through the cinema interactive to see how this idea would work for high school students in the arts. I was thrilled to see how the student would learn about just everything involving the cinema. All the way from the brief history of screenwriters to the grip, actors, camera person, or director. The student can then create and interact with the site by doing things like writing a short scene to be included in the cinema. It also allowed the student to try producing their own film, asking them to manage everything involved in creating a movie. The interactive part involves the student making the choices leading up to the actual creation of the film.

I thought this was a great strategy in showing students how one decision can make or break a particular concept, assignment, or life situation. This is a great tool for teaching ideas that fit "outside the box."

Concepts in Module 4

This week's strategies discussed identifying similarities and differences, homework and practice, and generating testing and hypotheses. I can say as a music teacher that there is a strong possibility I will not use some of these concepts in my classes, there are some that warrant thoughts and possible implementation in our curriculum.

Identifying Similarities and Differences: I understand this strategy is potentially very beneficial in other courses of study, however in music the way I use this is by identifying to the student how a performance or performer sounds compared to ours. I use specific examples in class by playing a recording of a professional group performing a certain selection or type of piece we may be working on for our concert. I sometimes avoid playing the exact piece for the class as I want the students to develop their own "ear" for how their music fits into the entire ensemble. However if I demonstrate a professional group performing a similar piece, I can show how that groups sounds and discuss how we can improve to make our group sound as good as the professional group. We are always making goals to help students strive for the very best, but these goals are realistic and worked on in lessons and sectional work.

Homework and Practice: Here is where we have really changed our strategies this year. In the past, our goal was to get students to practice a certain number of minutes each week. What we found was that students were ultimately changing the truth on these "practice charts" and sometimes even forging a parents signature before turning in for credit. We then went to a system where the student had to diagnosis some simple goals for each practice session and document the goals, then play specific etudes and/or exercises to help achieve the goals of the practice time, and then work on concert specific material. All of this was written on a "practice record" that documented the students practice time by use of written concepts. This was a great step forward but not quite what we needed to accomplish good student practicing.

We are now piloting a program called Smart Music. This computer based subscription helps students become involved in practicing by showing them on the computer screen what was done correctly and identify what was done incorrectly. The students are now given instant feedback and assessed on each performance of the music, lesson, or etude. Not only do students have access to the one book they may have been learning from before, but now they have the ability to work out of older books, other concert band and/or jazz band music, they can record their own music, work on scales, exercises and etudes specific to their instrument, and all of this is right on their computer screen. The student can practice and perform the assignment however long they wish and each time the system records the student so s/he can hear exactly what they sound like. It will then help identify for the student where the focus should be. This is not in any way a replacement for teacher instruction because it doesn't "teach" the student the concepts, but rather assess if the student is performing a concept or exercise up to a specific level of achievement.

Generating Testing and Hypotheses: This strategy ties in with what was discussed above. The analysis of the student work is tested within the smart music program. The student must then hypothesize the correct outcome and work to achieve a higher level of performance. This is done with the help of the teacher to show and demonstrate how to achieve such a level. However it is on the student to be tested on the concept that was assigned and be able to perform it at a level required for each grade level.

Module 3

It took me a while to complete this assignment because I was moving into our new home. This past summer, our home was destroyed in the Tornado that struck Eagle. What I thought was going to be the end to a very long summer/fall for my family by moving into our new home, has left me unfulfilled. My wife is really struggling with our new home. I can't blame her! It's been a difficult time for all of us here and with a 9 month old baby, it makes the situation even more challenging. As I'm sure you can tell, I'm hanging on by a very short thread. I'm trying to be as strong as possible for my wife and daughter, but I leave for work every day and my wife stays home with our Ella. I know this is off topic, but it's just something I needed to get out in the open.

Back on topic, I explored three of the following sites; Exploratree, Webspiration, and CmapTools. Each brought a different way of mapping ideas.

ExploraTree was a great site to use that had pre-made idea trees and many different maps. To get students thinking outside the box, this site would be good to see the whole picture of an idea or topic for future research.

Webspiration took the idea map to a whole new level. I like the different colors for each idea the maps give automatically. Webspiration looks like Exploratree, just 5 steps ahead.

CmapTools I did not enjoy as much. The opening page was nice because of its simplicity, however I felt that my students would struggle to find the small icons under specific parts of the map. This made things confusing as you had to hunt more for the map you wanted or needed.