3 Chapter Three | Scaffolding Exercises

Just as builders put scaffolding around a building while it is being built, so scaffolding can be used to support a person’s learning of written language.Rob Oliver^[1]

 

A digital story assignment is a fairly complex project which requires mastering the subject matter as well as using technology effectively to create an engaging, academically viable story in this multimedia genre. If you isolate the steps involved, plan for time to practice, and build upon the skills, both the process and the product of creating a digital story can be rewarding, even transformative.

Asking students to create a digital story and not giving them class time to do preparatory exercises is like handing them three balls and instructing them to go off and learn how to juggle with the proviso that they will receive a grade for how well they juggle. To assume someone can learn how to juggle on their own since they have thrown and caught a ball in the past is akin to believing that students who are adept at texting and editing photos can leverage those skills to create a successful digital story.

Scaffolding assignments are discreet low–stakes exercises that lead up to a digital story assignment and are playful and foster creativity and community. Each exercise focuses on one of the analytical or technical skills students need familiarity with in order to create academically strong, meaningful digital stories.

Take Karen: a straight–A student majoring in business who sat in the front row of my water seminar taking notes on her laptop, waiting to talk with me after class. I recognized something akin to panic in her bright blue eyes. “I can take exams and do research papers no problem, but I’ve never even opened the movie program on my laptop.” This was the first time that Karen had been asked to communicate her academic findings in a visual medium in a substantial assignment.

Or Mai, the soft spoken student in the back of the classroom who had missed several classes and who I discovered did not own a laptop or camera, was married, had a child, and had to make sure the house, the meals, and her husband and baby were taken care of before coming to class.

Karen and Mai point to the need for low–stakes exercises that provide all students with similar access to practicing necessary skills that build toward story development. The low risk, playful environment fosters a sense of community while helping you identify the skill sets of different students, which can be useful when creating peer groups. The digital divide is alive and well, and if even only a handful of students do not have the same access to technology at home, this apportioned time in class helps to even the playing field.

I use a combination of these assignments throughout the semester to help students become familiar with the elements of a digital story:

1. Connecting students’ interests and experiences to course themes in order to create relevant digital stories
2. Taking photographs and videos to strengthen students’ ability to create topic–relevant, aesthetically powerful, and culturally respectful images
3. Cultivating visual literacy
4. Analyzing the elements of a digital story as a class
5. Getting into the music
6. Making a two–minute movie
7. Analyzing audience
8. Working through Fair Use and Copyright issues in reference to research, music, images, and video clips
9. Interviewing
10. Narrating
11. Storyboarding
12. Online peer review of complete draft of digital story

Scaffolding Exercises

In this chapter I present many scaffolding exercises for use and inspiration in your own digital storytelling assignments. To keep the chapter flowing and to minimize distractions, the full exercises are located in the Appendix and linked–to from Chapter 3; each exercise has a return link that will bring you back to where you left off in the chapter. Having the exercises compiled in the Appendix also puts them into one convenient location, making it easier for you to search
through and reference them in the future.

1. Connecting students’ interests and experiences to course themes in order to create relevant digital stories

Students tend to invest most in topics they are interested in, have experience in, or that directly relate to their academic study. Often these topics are right under their noses—such as a favorite sport or a fascination with weird weather—but it is hard for them to see the potential academic topics glimmering below the surface of their interests. For example, a freshman student in my water seminar who loved baseball chose to create a digital story about the sustainable elements in the design of Target Field, the stadium for the Minnesota Twins; several students from farming families translated their background knowledge into relevant academic topics related to agricultural practices and water conservation.

Throughout the semester I work on connecting what students are naturally interested in to the ideas and concepts they need to become familiar with in class: the following exercises help me accomplish this.

Exercise 1.1

• Freewriting, sharing, and providing feedback

Exercise 1.2

• Index cards on the first day

Exercise 1.3

• Individual or small group conferences with students

2. Taking photographs and videos to strengthen students’ ability to create topic–relevant, aesthetically powerful, and culturally respectful images

During the first semester I integrated the digital story assignment, a wise tech fellow told me to hold off on bringing technology into the classroom until I’d established the course content. Cameras, phones, tablets, tripods, computers – they are like writing a dog into a short story—you mean for Sadie the beagle to be a supporting character and she ends up stealing the show. Technology is an especially naughty dog, barking and slobbering over everything and jumping on the tables and taking up precious class time with distractions and questions and quirky glitches many teachers are ill–prepared to respond to. This is the reason why I wait about a third of the way into the semester before I break out the cameras.

Mississippi River by student Marcie LaPointe

I announce that in the next class we will be heading outside to take photos and encourage students to bring a camera they are fond of and have access to. For students who do not have access to a camera, my department purchased cameras and tripods, which I used to lug to class, but more often, most students have their own cameras. In addition, the University of Minnesota has the “Smart Learning Commons” which provides students with technical equipment (such as cameras) that they can check out with their library card. Every semester I loan cameras to students who would not have access to them otherwise. Unwittingly perpetuating the digital divide is a potential risk with these exercises so be aware.

Many students now have smart phones, and I am fine if they prefer to use them for taking photos and videos, but I encourage them to take a few shots with a digital camera and similar shots with their phones.

Exercise 2.1

• Taking students out in the field with their cameras

Exercise 2.2

• Practicing uploading and editing shots and peer–sharing of knowledge to a course blog
• I’m not a photographer or visual artist, so here are some exercises I’ve used to bring “expertise” into my classroom.

Exercise 2.3

• Artist as a guest in class

Exercise 2.4

• Attend and reflect on a public event by a photographer, photojournalist, videographer, or filmmaker.

Exercise 2.5

• Research good photographers, videographers, and artists and their work.

3. Cultivating visual literacy

How do you help your students take good pictures and video? What strategies do you have for refining the technical aspects of creating digital stories? What assignments do you give that help students foster a culturally inclusive understanding of visual images?

Educators who require images as part of academic work soon find the contradiction that students who have been weaned on images, and who have been described as visual learners, are not necessarily educated in visual literacy. Many times, students are not immediately able to unpack the cultural and social power of an image and turn around and employ it in a respectful, aware way in order to communicate their knowledge.

Students need scaffolding exercises which include time and space to do a close reading of what they are viewing, and to practice reflecting on the image in a lively, thoughtful way that leads to strong academic discourse. As educators we need to slow students down and help them SEE what they are seeing, then engage with it and reflect on their insights in writing or in conversation.

Exercise 3.1

• Cultivating visual literacy through reading and creating visual communication of academic knowledge

Exercise 3.2

• Fostering visual literacy through practicing a close reading of an image

4. Analyzing the elements of a digital story as a class

We’re busy, aren’t we? We need assignments that fire on all pistons, that facilitate both content and technical knowledge. Here are two exercises that do both.

Exercise 4.1

• PSA/digital story review

Exercise 4.2

• Select a story to share and analyze

5. Getting into the music

Music is perhaps the most empowering aspect of digital stories – giving students agency over the soundtrack. Often students’ initial instinct is to hit it hard, though, and to be obvious about the emotional impact (most of them were weaned on mainstream American TV and movies, after all). Most students are remarkably adept at picking music that matches the content of their digital story; what is it that makes them either a genius or ham–fisted in this area?

Exercise 5.1

• PSA/digital story review

Having students analyze the impact of the music in PSAs or other digital stories is one way to help them become more nuanced in their own use of music; pointing them to good models is another. Music is also the most thorny in terms of copyright (see the “Working through Fair Use and Copyright issues…” section of this chapter).

6. Making a two–minute movie

Giving students a chance to make a mini–movie before they tackle a digital story assignment allows them to practice integrating the elements needed in a low–stakes, fun environment. This allows students to focus on content and employ the multimedia more effectively when they go on to create their digital story.

Exercise 6.1

• Making and sharing two–minute movies in class or in an online forum

7. Analyzing audience

Thinking through and creating a digital story for a specific audience is a powerful learning experience for students. I made the decision from the outset of using digital stories for the water seminar that the website where the digital stories would be archived would be public, and so most of the students shaped their story to the audience of the general public. This required them to own what the general public did and didn’t know about their topic, as well as to realize that the academic work they did for my course had a life beyond the confines of our classroom: their friends, their other teachers, or their grandmother, could and would most likely view it!

I gave students the option to choose a specific audience. For example, a Hmong student chose to focus on the problem of high levels of mercury in the lakes in and around Minneapolis/Saint Paul. For her main audience she chose the Hmong residents who fished in the lakes. She chose to interview fishermen, recorded her voiceover in Hmong, and used text to translate in English. Another student, a future elementary teacher, chose to focus on children in Iraq and the challenges they faced around access to clean water. The student directed her story around what a 10–12 year old student could understand and be interested in. Some students choose to focus on fellow college students on a relevant campus issue.

Exercise 7.1

• Find the Audience

8. Working through Fair Use and Copyright issues in reference to research, music, images, and video clips

Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” is a required song in the soundtrack for inspiring students to care about copyright issues. To frame this issue in terms of respect helps them to invest in the time needed to parse out citing and respectfully using others’ work. Copyright concerns are a hard sell to students who are adept at cutting and pasting in the social medias they communicate in – I am only a few paces behind them. Yet as a working, published writer, with friends who are writers, scholars, musicians and artists, I also understand and believe in the importance of fair use of others’ work. I am transparent about my mixed feelings, and also my belief that respect informs the need for the academic arrow (and at times financial nod) to the creators of the knowledge students are accessing for their digital stories. The need for respect is universal—a common need we can all relate too.

There are a lot of resources online for help with copyright and fair use issues. Here are two of my favorites:

• The University of Minnesota
• Interactive tool on Thinking Through Fair Use
  

Before we begin the digital story capstone assignment in the last third of the semester, students in my writing–intensive water seminar will have written several papers and demonstrated an understanding of how to avoid plagiarism, correctly and effectively incorporate research into their writing, and create accurate paraphrasing, in–text citations, and complete a “Works Cited” page. Still, these issues crop up in the digital story assignment, in part because it is a multimedia genre and there are many elements students are addressing simultaneously, but also because of the increasingly blinkered cut and paste post–modern pastiche of our living.

Regarding fair use of music. I wish to wave a magic wand and tell you that if you require students to capture the hyperlink and cite the musician, song, and CD in the “Works Cited” page, that you’ll be set—fair use for academic purposes. For the most part that would work. But, if you’re going to have students share their stories publically, it gets a little more complicated – and often, students will want to share their digital stories in venues outside the academic arena.

Check to see if your school has a copyright policy and, if not, it would be worth spending time thinking through these issues as a department or school and studying the TEACH act and Fair Use and Copyright guides.^[2] Some educators adhere to the “10% rule” or only allow 30 seconds of songs, movies, or other works while others take a more holistic approach to use of other’s materials.

You can direct students to websites that have Royalty Free or Copyright Permitted Music, including music that is licensed with Creative Commons. If students create their own music it would eliminate copyright problems and add a new layer to
the concept of “participatory.”

Exercise 8.1

• Review of the student’s digital story transcript

Require a transcript of the complete draft of the student’s digital story assignment. The process of writing down all the text not only causes students to think through the research integration, but also helps them to assess their story removed from the lure of images. The challenge with the transcript is it is time–consuming for them to create, and time–intensive for you, the teacher, to assess and respond to.

9. Interviewing

For the capstone digital story assignment, I require students to conduct and videotape a face–to–face interview with a relevant specialist and to integrate excerpts of that interview into their digital stories (for different, or smaller, story assignments, I don’t require an interview, but many students choose to include conversations with peers and interviews as part of their stories). The interviewing process provides students with many valuable lessons, brings the subject matter to life in real time, and provides an enduring reminder of the many resources of knowledge available to them other than the Internet. At the University of Minnesota, a Research I university, with the Twin Cities campuses of over 50,000 students, the interview gives students an opportunity to have a one–on–one conversation with, and access to, the remarkable knowledge of researchers and faculty. Many students choose to go out into the community for their interviews and make valuable contacts with businesses and organizations in turn, as well as become more familiar with the rich resources the community has to offer.

It is asking a lot to send young students out to an on–site interview. Experience has taught me the value of familiarizing students with the technical and interpersonal elements of an effective interview in order to honor the time of the interviewee, to maximize the benefit of the conversation (i.e., preparing nuanced questions that yield stronger responses), and to make it a successful and enjoyable experience for the student. There’s nothing worse than for students to take the time and effort to prepare for and conduct an interview, only to discover that they had accidentally tilted the camera just before filming and only the CEO’s elbow was recorded, or that the specialist they chose is as dull as dragging a two–by–four around and they have an hour of footage and don’t know how to make it come to life for the viewer.

Interviews may usher in permission issues. I applied for an exemption from IRB in order for students to be able to conduct in–person interviews. I worked with my tech fellow on creating a release form. There are confidentiality issues related to interviewing minors and children as well.

Exercise 9.1

• Practicing the technology – In class activity where students conduct and film brief interviews with each other

Exercise 9.2

• Preparing effective questions

10. Narrating

A first person narrator, usually in the form of a voiceover, was and still is one of the spokes on the wheels of digital stories created and inspired by The Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS). The CDS informed my earliest understanding of digital storytelling, and still animates, collectively, our discussions. I allow my students to choose how much they wish to be a presence in their stories by providing models of stories using different kinds of narrative positions. For example, minimal presence of the student in the story (no voiceover, no photos of the student), to maximum presence of the student (both featured in, and doing a voiceover of his/her story), helps students to have agency over this
decision.

Exercise 10.1

• View and analyze the role of narrator in two different digital stories, preferably addressing similar topics

11. Storyboarding

A storyboard is a rough visualization of a project that conveys its flow and direction with minimal effort on the part of the storyboarder. In a storyboard for a digital story, each frame is roughly sketched out with both visual and non–visual elements such as voiceovers, music, and any other notes or reminders that offer organizational and structural help for the storyboarder.

Requiring students to create a storyboard goes a long way in helping students make good use of their story elements.

Check out these storyboarding tips from Dreamworks!

Exercise 11.1

• Creating storyboards

12. Online peer review of complete draft of digital story

Requiring students to review each other’s digital story drafts allows them to receive feedback from someone other than their teacher.

Exercise 12.1

• Peer review of stories in rough draft form to gain feedback and learn how other students are organizing their stories

Teacher Reflection

As a fellow educator I experience the challenge of essentials competing for class time. Scaffolding exercises can feel like tossing an extra ball into the already challenging juggle of needs. A little planning and investment earlier in the semester will come back to you and your students in the decreased numbers of technical challenges and the increased satisfaction derived from your students creating stronger, more meaningful digital stories. You will be thanking yourself when it comes time to assess and grade those digital stories, which is the focus of Chapter 4. The Chapter 3 teacher reflection video is a discussion on the different approaches teachers have taken to prepare their students conceptually and technologically for their digital story assignments.

Scaffolding Exercises