Learning with Jason Ohler via Skype

Today we were fortunate to have a Skype session with Jason Ohler, author of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom! Wow! Was I blown away by how much we learned with him in just over an hour.  Jason expertly led us through a mini-workshop  showing us the depth of amazing resources compiled on his web-site.  Jason is an engaging and personable presenter and easily set us all at ease as we settled into our first Skype delivered professional development experience. The session was lively and interesting. Jason shared with us his thoughts on teaching students to move from just words to collage. His 7 B's were wonderful and inspired all of us to consider the importance of teaching about visually differentiated text. Other gigantic takeaways for me included the following tidbits:1.  Never yield executive producer status with students. You should give them creative liberty but you should always reserve the right to ask a student to clarify, provide better clarity and to do more research if necessary.  You can gently use phrases such as, "Help me better understand this? What was the purpose of that?  Have you considered? This confuses me."2.  Music trumps everything so don't overuse it!  Encourage students to use it judisciously and with very thoughtful intention. Music is so emotionally compelling that it can completely & unintentionally alter, color or amplify a story component.3.  Remember that all digital storytelling projects are literacy projects - follow a process. 

• Tell a good story
• Tell a bad story - deconstruct it
• Have students help build a story
• Map the story - use graphic organizers
• Remind students about story form/elements such as problem, solution, transformation, what did the character realize?
• Use the Circus Tent 
• Peer Pitch
• Perform the Story - voice over narration (when they speak it and hear themselves, they will fix it automatically without the need for you to intervene)
• Write! 
• What technology will we use to tell this story?  Let the narrative drive the media rather than the other way around. 

After the session, we did a reflection responding to the following questions:

• What surprised us?
• What are we excited about?
• What are we nervous about?
• What support do we need?
• What burning questions do we still have?

From the ensuing discussion, I was excited by the depth of understanding demonstrated by the teachers.  Even more amazing was the clear desire to begin integrating these techniques from the get go!  Teachers shared that they will need help learning how to use the equipment and tools but astutely they understood that they will also need collaboration and reflection time. We thought of some very creative ways to make time for this in our busy schedules  including making sure we have at least one 1/2 day per trimester to collaboratively plan on Wednesdays starting at 12:30 when students have electives so we don't really need to hire subs.  We also need to schedule time for the specialty teachers to support the projects. We discussed using some of the professional developments funds to support this.  We also thought it would be great to get a green screen set up!We are so lucky to have some amazing specialty teachers who are fully supportive of this - it will make the projects so rich!  We would really like to thank Jason for sharing his expertise.