"Say three things about yourself: 2 true and 1 lie" That’s an ‘icebreaker’ I’ve been instructed to take part in at the start of two different training courses (not digital storytelling) I attended. I dislike being told to tell lies as it’s hardly the best way to kick off a relationship with a group of people I’m going to be learning with.
In a similar vein, I don’t like this suggestion by The Examiner that groups of children can be tricked into thinking they’re making a unique story where, in reality, all groups have been given the same images to construct their digital story. Here’s what the article suggests:
"break the class into groups of four. Each group has to use six pictures to create a story in Photostory 3, a free program available for Windows. The catch is that the entire class has the same six pictures. This is a cool way to introduce them to the easy-to-use Photostory, and to help them learn about what a difference perspective makes in what a set of pictures could mean." - Elaine Plybon, an Examiner from Dallas.
A better way of showing that different images bring different stories to light is to let the students know from the outset that they’re all dealing with the same images. Nothing’s lost, except a dramatic ‘reveal’ moment for the teacher. What’s gained is the continuing teacher-student trust. And that’s priceless.
1 response so far ↓
1 Elaine Plybon // Sep 2, 2011 at 1:43 pm
Just came across this article and wanted to point out that your suggestion is exactly what I do in my class. I never pretend that the students don’t have the same pictures - they can clearly see that they are downloading the same six pictures as their peers - they are usually on a wiki for all of them to see. The fascinating thing is how different the resulting stories are - I never try to make them think they are creating stories from different images. I’m sorry if that is the way the article seemed to indicate.
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