Maria Popova ^[1]

To fellow educators:

Welcome to The Changing Story: Digital Stories that Participate in Transforming Teaching & Learning.

Stories are at the heart of how we are motivated to learn; they are the hub of the knowledge-wheel. In each chapter of this digital book, from the scaffolding assignments to the examples of students’ digital stories, my goal is to provide you with both hands-on methods, as well as inspiration and research, to reveal how digital storytelling can be a powerful medium for communicating subject matter in your teaching as well as in your curricular design. Whether your hope is for students to create digital stories in order to convey a specific concept, or for you to present research findings that require an integrated approach to understanding, stories made with digital media can play a vital role in transformative teaching and learning.

My hope is that, by providing you with pedagogically informed curricula and resources, you will have a more nuanced understanding of the power of story and you can then help students harness that power to create stories that are successful according to your own learning objectives.

Since 2008, when I began integrating digital stories into my undergraduate teaching, my students have exhibited a deeper level of engagement with their subject matter and a stronger sense of ownership of their academic work.

While engaging with The Changing Story, you will become familiar with the different elements you are asking students to use while creating their own digital stories – text, video, audio, and motion. Some students will use the elements you ask them to use while others will self-select and gallop ahead on their own, which you should expect. This leads to the baffling contradiction that you will soon discover when designing your own assignments which require digital media: students’ technical knowledge in areas like texting and Instagram, does not translate to literacy in other areas that are necessary to create effective academic work in this multimedia realm.

The Changing Story provides scaffolding assignments to build knowledge of and familiarity within these areas:

•  Helping students understand the narrative arc of a story.
•  Connecting students’ interests to academic concepts.
•  Providing peer feedback of digital story process and drafts.
•  Editing and revising a multimedia project.
•  Fair use of material (e.g., images, video, music, research).
•  Developing a culturally-inclusive lens for visual knowledge.
•  Fostering visual literacy.
•  Cultivating critical media analysis.

This digital book also addresses the other contradiction which lies with us: as educators, many of us are asking students to work with digital media and technology that either we have not done ourselves, or haven’t yet mastered. We find ourselves skirting our comfort zones and giving over precious class time to navigate technical issues that come along with the mobile devices in the hands of most students. By engaging with The Changing Story, you will participate in the process of discovery that is an essential part of what distinguishes between simply completing an assignment and a transformative learning experience. The Changing Story will enact with you, explicitly and implicitly through design and content, a participatory use of digital media which our students understand.

Henry Jenkins, Professor of Communications, Journalism and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California defines participatory culture as:

Given the diverse, global societies and kinds of challenges students will be facing in their futures, students need models of hopeful, creative, collaborative, and integrated approaches to learning and problem–solving, such as the Paraguay Landfill Harmonics — Recycled Orchestra .

The design of The Changing Story underscores the recursive nature of learning – occurring over time and through repeated loops. Each time you engage with this book you will build on your knowledge of digital stories in a manner similar to the low-stakes scaffolding assignments presented in this book to help students build toward creating effective digital stories. The interactive nature of the book invites you to participate in your experience; how long you choose to engage, or how many times you click or swipe, is up to you. This is one of the gifts of digital media, which

distinguishes it from other mediums. While reading this digital book you will become a learner in a community with others.

Though the research on digital storytelling is still emerging, several scholars and researchers help elucidate what my colleagues and I are experiencing by integrating digital stories into our classes. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy reveals that higher level thinking skills are required for educators to develop stories which effectively communicate content, as well as for students to create stories that successfully demonstrate their academic learning. Each chapter provides you with relevant research and resources.

What The Changing Story is not is a plug for certain devices or brands of technology, a technical manual, nor an apology for the importance of technology in the classroom. If you are an educator who has not yet welcomed the tablet or other mobile devices into your classroom, I am not here to persuade you about the value of technology in the classroom. Many educators teach well without technology, and serve as an important model during this paradigmatic transition to technology-informed education.

I designed the assignments in this digital book to be implemented on mobile devices such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones, and for educators who:

•  are either interested in or already integrating digital media in their classes,
•  understand their mission to include student-centered, participatory learning with technology, and/or
•  would like to gain more insight into and examples of digital story assignments that are informed by a multicultural pedagogy which fosters critical and creative thinking.

The Changing Story is also for those of you who find yourselves in a classroom full of students with tablets and laptops and confronted with the mandate to improve student performance – all while experiencing the reality of trundling carts, missing power chords, students switching screens when you walk by, and servers crashing mid–test. Perhaps you fit both of these descriptions. What is happening in your classroom and school is occurring in districts near and far—globally, even – with differing levels of infrastructure, technical support, and professional development opportunities. A parallel increase in technology use is occurring in most of our homes as well, which has implications for what we are navigating in our classrooms.

Whether you have 20 minutes over your lunch break and want ideas for an assignment, or you’ve been teaching with digital stories and wish to foster critical media literacy or to help students employ a more nuanced integration of images and text, the goals for the book are to provide:

•  examples of students’ digital stories,
•  pedagogically–informed curricula with scaffolding exercises,
•  relevant tools and resources,
•  related academic research, and
•  inspiration to ignite your intellect and imagination.

Note the “in Teaching” in the book’s subtitle. As technology becomes more ubiquitous in the classroom, good teaching informed by thoughtful pedagogy becomes even more imperative. I hope that by engaging with this digital book it helps you further inhabit your teaching as well as your engagement with your subject matter. In 2007, when I designed a writing-intensive freshmen seminar on water and decided to replace the final research paper assignment with the capstone digital story, I was doing it for the students, reluctantly. I approached integrating technology like having to give blood or emptying the compost bin – a chore. But what I discovered was that the process renewed my energy for teaching. Not the technology, itself – plastic, wires, precious metals, and electricity – but the need to collaborate with colleagues and academic technology staff and students, as well as the energizing impact the assignments had on students. The ushering in of images provided a creative space that renewed, and renews, my work. I wish this for you as well.

The changing story of our teaching points to increased need to model multidisciplinary, culturally inclusive, collaborative, applied approaches to learning. Given the diverse, global societies and kinds of challenges students will be facing in their futures (e.g., increased competition for natural resources, effects of climate change and globalization, more diverse, mobile societies), students need models of hopeful, creative, collaborative, and integrated approaches to learning and problem-solving. The Changing Story will provide models to help seed your mind and imagination with possibilities so you can in turn model these approaches and foster these skills with your students.

An essential part of the discourse around mobile devices is the profound impact of the lifecycle of technological devices as well as the electricity they require on people and ecosystems across the globe. The Changing Story explores these impacts through multimedia that can be used in teaching and learning, and provides hopeful models for wise use of technology, such as this recent innovation  by engineering students in Lima Peru who created a billboard that generates drinking water.

The “Participates in” in the title is a nod to Henry Jenkins’ concept of participatory culture which includes us as educators, and it also indicates that digital stories are only one component of the larger pedagogical dynamic which is informed by you. I leave you with the most important insight I’ve learned:

Lead with your Pedagogy– Let the Technology Follow.

Each chapter of the book (except chapter 5) follows this pattern:

•  Quote
  A relevant quote to the focus of the chapter.
• Content
  The concepts and examples of the chapter’s focus.
•  Student Work and Reflection
  Examples of student digital storytelling assignments and four companion video interviews where students reflect on the experiences they had creating their stories and the impact the assignments had on their life.
• Faculty Interviews
  Short interviews with faculty, examining their experiences with digital story assignments including input and suggestions for adaption (what worked, didn’t work, and why) and cross-discipline-focused reflections.
•  Footnotes
  Articles, links, poems, and other resources that support the chapter and its content are in the form of in-text footnotes: click on the footnote number to expand the details; click on the footnote number a second time and the information will disappear.