During the process of creating a digital story, I found this ITSE (2016) standard has been directly involved in my personal learning progress and goals:
1.1 Empowered Learner–Students leverage technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating competency in their learning goals, informed by the learning sciences.
1.1.b–Students build networks and customize their learning environments in ways that support the learning process.
I think this is because my story is aligned with a real-world goal for which I am passionate. This speaks to one way to help students gain similar progress by taking the time to help them find something they are passionate about which can be used as a motivational tool for learning. This type of learning is a means of not only learning about a subject but also learning about ourselves. Particularly, we learn about our learning styles and gain a greater ability to incorporate these into our approach to learning new things. I enjoyed the flexibility of being able to decide not only what story I wanted to tell but also the way I wanted to tell it. Consequently, I can customize my learning environment and approach.
Community members (students, staff, faculty, and families) can become empowered learners by following this approach. The synectics model of learning, developed by J. J. Gordon, focuses on creative problem-solving strategies. This model requires thinking “outside the box” and a willingness to explore non-traditional solutions. Joyce, Weil, & Calhoun discuss “irrational” strategies of problem-solving to stimulate creativity in various areas by using this process of learning (2015, p. 157). Gordon applied this process to both the arts and sciences and believed the creative process was the same. I believe this is an important strategy to teach and learn because many solutions are non-obvious. Gordon asserted that the “emotional component is more important than the intellectual, the irrational more important than the rational” (Gordon, 1961, p. 6). Data retrieved from this activity can be used to provide student feedback and reinforce the confidence of students in their ability to think strategically and learn independently.
Ohler recognizes that, while students need to be literate in new media as a “matter of survival” and for their personal fulfillment, they also need to understand its power of persuasion by experiencing it directly (2013, p. 56). Using my own experience as a model, students will not only be more engaged in the learning process when they select their stories and the ways to tell them, but they will feel empowered by seeing the potential reach their story has using new media. In my case this is hopefully a wide TV audience over a period of years. In other cases, it may be more about the possibility of building a brand and following on social media. Students are consumers of new media on these distribution platforms, and many already aspire to become social media influencers already. But regardless of the platform, this student-centered approach is enriching and empowering to the students. Never have teachers, students, and other community members had such ease of access to the potential of digital storytelling through new media than today. Many tools are free and the means of reaching a massive audience is readily available. I believe this empowering in a similar way that moveable type, the printing press, and mass literacy have empowered people for the previous few centuries. It represents a revolution in educational empowerment.
References:
Gordon, William J. J. (1961). Synectics: The Development of Creative Capacity. Collier-Macmillan.
ISTE Standards for Students (2016). https://www.iste.org/standards/for-students
Joyce, B., Weil, M. & Calhoun, E. (2015). Models of teaching, (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Ohler, J. (2013). Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Learning, and Creativity.
