The World Beyond Essays - Digital Storytelling with Jason Ohler

So, I read the description for this session and thought to myself that this will either be really good, or I'll leave in the first five minutes. I stayed through to the end because it was outstanding. Jason talked about media literacy replacing our outdated definition of literacy that only involves text.

When we use our old definition of literacy we say you are literate if you can read and write. Today we have many more ways of expressing ourselves. Ohler talked about the "Media Collage" that we see on most web sites today and that not only do your students need to know how to extract meaning from these sites, the must also be able to produce this media or they're not really literate in modern society.

Jason stressed that you don't have to have lots of expensive equipment or software to create a compelling digital story. In fact all you need is a computer. He shared an engaging story created by a student using still images in WindowsMovieMaker (free if you have Windows). It's the story that matters, not the toys or effects.

He also spent sometime discussing what a story is and what it isn't. It is often tempting to have students create multimedia reports, but when we can have them create stories than they are more engaged with the process and the material. For a story we some sort of problem and a resolution of that problem. That can often simply be the misconceptions or misunderstandings the student had along the way and how they resolved those misconceptions. i.e. What was the learning process.

All in all, I'm glad I decided to walk into this session. I may even buy his book. You can find more information at:

http://www.jasonohler.com

or for information on the session go to:
Web 2.1 and the World Beyond Essays - http://www.jasonohler.com/storytelling/beyondwords.cfm

Making Connections - Guerrilla Sessions

I went to Ben's MaculSpace Meetup this morning that was held in the Guerrilla Session room (Pullman room at Amway). I got to do one of the things I always look forward to when I go to conferences and that is networking with other like minded educators. We wished we'd recorded the whole thing, it was a great conversation.


The sessions are great, but it's those "hallway" conversations that often have more power to change the way I teach. It's the connections and conversations that make this really worth while. I guess that's why I really like social networking sites like the one Ben has set up over at maculspace.ning.com If you haven't already, you should come over and check it out.

Guerrilla Sessions are a great place for this sort of interaction. These sessions will be much less formal and should actually look more like the model of education we keep talking about rather then the Sage on the Stage model we have in the regular sessions.

To that end, I've also put up a picture of the Sign-Up sheet for tomorrow. So far it looks like we have:

• Show Me The Money - Grant Writing at 8:25
• Steal Back Fair Use: Copy small segments or whole DVD's for your own or educational use. at 10:00
• 11:30 Still Looks Open
• XO Laptops: Check it out - 1:15
  

MACUL - Guerrilla Sessions

MACUL is just a couple weeks away and I can't wait. Last year one of the things I was looking forward to most were the Guerrilla Sessions. It looked like they wouldn't happen and then there was some internet buzz and the MACUL Borad found a room for the first Guerrilla Sessions. I was excited.

Unfortunately there ended up only being one impromptu session and I missed it. The folks from the Geek!ED! podcast did one where they recorded live at MACUL. I would have been there, but I was presenting a hands-on session at the same time.

I still really like the idea of Guerrilla Sessions. Basically, these sessions could be on the cutting edge of new technologies, so new they didn't really exist before the session submission deadline. Or maybe they're a bit geeky/technical, or maybe a little too short for a full one hour session, or maybe the presenter has good ideas but was a bit intimidated by the quality of MACUL presentations and consequently didn't write a session proposal.

This year I have ideas and I plan on doing at least one Guerrilla Session, maybe two. One I'm planning on for sure is:

How do I, as an educator, exercise my fair use rights with DVDs? There are times when I need a small section of a DVD that I legally own for use in my classroom. I can, of course, cue up the DVD to the proper section, but this is cumbersome and wastes valuable teaching time. It is much more effective to extract just the small section I need.

I'll be shooting for a good time on Friday for this one, keep your eye out if you're interested. Does anyone else have any plans?