“The digital storytelling process—with historical research, the production of a detailed script, storyboards, and short documentary-style presentation—allows students to hone their critical thinking skills, develop their visual and digital literacy skills, and improve their writing skills, all while deepening their engagement with historical narratives.”
This quote represents the major recurring theme for the week because it perfectly states why digital tools can be so beneficial when implementing storytelling in a history classroom. Oftentimes, people do not like to think of reciting a portion of history as storytelling or as a narrative because they feel that it takes away from the seriousness of what they are talking about (which was a big discussion in my Writing History course). However, teaching and learning history in a story format not only makes the material more engaging, but also allows students to develop skills they can use in many other aspects of life. Critical thinking, visual and digital literacy skills, and writing skills are all important when growing as a student and as a person. This provides the perfect opportunity to improve on those skills because it allows you to do those activities outside of the typical English classroom while also learning more about the history that pertains to your course. When I was in high school, my history classrooms often did not require me to utilize these skills which left me very unprepared not only for my college history courses, but all of my college courses. While I learned to adapt and have become a better writer (among other things), I still wish that the idea of digital storytelling had been used more in my earlier education. Therefore, this quote fits the theme of this week perfectly because this weeks lesson (and this class overall) is designed to teach future history educators/historians how to most effectively teach history in a world where reliance on technology grows every day.
“Narrowing down research topics and research questions were by far the greatest challenges for my students.”
This quote made me wonder why the teacher did not give more guidelines when it came to what the research topics could be. When reading further into this section of the text, the writer tells that some students wanted to cover a long period of time that would be difficult to fit into a five minute documentary, while other students wanted to focus on events that occurred to recently. I understand that meetings were held with each group in order to brainstorm ideas in the event that they were struggling with choosing a topic, but I feel as though this could have been avoided. Why did the teacher not give guidelines pertaining to how recent the event could be, how long ago the event could be, how much time in years it could cover, etc.? Something that has been discussed in a number of my history courses that are also geared towards education is allowing students opportunities to make decisions on their own because it increases engagement. While that is important to do, I feel that laying down some parameters would not seriously decrease engagement or harm the project in any way. Furthermore, this quote made me wonder how I would go about doing this in my future classroom.
Article: “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within” by Edward Tufte (cannot be linked)
“But formats, sequencing, and cognitive approach should be decided by the character of the content and what is to be explained, not by the limitations of the presentation technology.”
I feel as though this quote is worth further exploration because it stresses something that is very important to remember when attempting to implement these digital tools into lessons in your classroom. Presentation tools such as Omeka, PowerPoint, Prezi, Google Slides, and many more often cater to different sets of needs when it comes to how you want to present information. However, when making the decision on which one you would want to use it should not be because one tool is flashier than the other. While showing your work or information in a visually appealing way is something to strive for, it should not be the deciding factor when using a digital tool. For example, if I wanted to do a digital gallery of artifacts, I would make the decision to use Omeka over other presentations because the content of what I want to show others is better suited for that tool. While you could do a gallery on the other digital tools, it would not flow as well and therefore would not be the most advantageous to use.
