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New Media Assessment Workshop Sept. 21, 2007 September 21, 2007

Posted by lsmblog in Digital Storytelling.
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NHSTE New Media Assessment Workshop: Rubrics, Perspectives, Assessment Materials

1. How do I know it’s a good story?
2. How do I tell that up front? (moving from assessment to helping)

Storytelling as a transformative process: Not only do you describe a transformation in the story, but the process of telling the story enables that transformation.Digital Storytelling – How to express oneself, even if you can’t write.

Story thinking and Analytic thinking = New pedagogical frontier. You want to be highly engaged.

Reality: New Media calls into question the way we teach and the way we assess. Teachers all believe that kids ought to be able to do this; But they are not willing to make time for it in the current structure.

Questions to Consider:

• As the technology gets better, the stories get worse. It is all about the story, not the media. How do you tell an oral story?
• What is the difference between Media literacy and Media fluency
• How do you define done?
• What is the impact of having a performance, of being public, on the outcome?
• What about those who do not want to be viewed or recorded? It’s OK.
• What is the significance of the 4th R: Art?
• How do we teach in the world of a ‘multimedia collage’?
• How do you make things copy and paste proof? (example: take a picture and then have students tell a story…)
• What is the purpose of my story (these are each on a continuum)?

1. Is my metaphor an essay or a poem?
2. Is it a documentary, and genre?
3. Does it have universal resonance or niche resonance? Is it a story or a report?
4. Does it involve passive viewing or active viewing (involves questions – what are the questions to ask at the end of the story?)?
5. Things that drive assessment:
   1. Is it about myself or about content?
   2. Is it 1st persona and involved or 3rd person and detached?
   3. Is it emotionally engaged or detached and objective?
   4. Tone boundaries or unclear boundaries (appropriate tone diversity)?
   5. Is narrative a focus or not a focus?
   6. Is music supportive or is music distracting? Have them critique tv and see that music is never a distraction.
   7. Is it going to be a performance/video information or are you using still images with voice over?
   8. Do you value creativity and originality or not? (presence of original art work, ideas, writing…, fiction rather than reporting).
   9. Constrained, economy valued or is it not valued?
   10. Production: How much low production values or high production values (glitzy, Tv)? [Rule of 80/20: High production value piece of media and parce out time - 80% done in 20% of the time. 80% of the time doing the high end. Forget the polish.]
   11. Is the media grammar sound or is the media grammar unsound?
   12. Is help a part of the process or not? [did the kids do that?]
   13. Is the technology low end, available or is it high end or not available?
   14. In the rubric: Leave a category for the Directors discretion. Some kids who get something we don’t.
   15. Students can not exceed the opportunity you have given them.

Process / Issues:

Focus on the Quality of Transformation (Luke Skywalker and getting in touch with the ‘force’)

If a story is the appropriate metaphor, you need the Story Core: Problem (tension), Solution (resolution), Transformation. Go beyond a report. What is the quality of the transformation in the story?

1. Planning
2. Pitch the story (is the transformation strong?)

• Somebody’s changing – It’s the new you that wants to come out that is the tension.
• When you watch a story, watch it twice: First time, for the story; Second time, for the media grammar (How well is it told?).
• Scripting, not writing. “Literacy under the radar” – JO If you storyboard: You will have a complete flow with logic, but it does not mean that it is a good story.
• Storyboarding: flow of emotion, Storyboarding: flow of motion – JO
• Crayons and paper: in the “Green Room”
• Example: Fox Becomes a Better Person by Hannah Davis

• VOICE: 2 minutes per page, but if pauses, etc. fewer minutes per page. Single space, large font.
• There is tons of writing and planning when creating scripts and stories.
• We are always the producers: We focus on quality, wisdom, assessment and feedback.
• Character transformation, in the context of Bloom’s taxonomy.
• If you do it all yourself, you don’t have copyright issues. De-emphasize the commercial… Students do their own artwork.
• Media Production Process – How to do anything process. Media Production Process: Built in formative assessment check-list.

A Rubric:

Assignment: To use media to demonstrate their understanding of the concept of metaphor.

Giving them a grade: Assignment: Media: :using a scale of 1-10 – it is very subjective – They are extremely competent…

Types of Stories

• Computer-based: Ken Burns form (mix of media)
• Performance Based: Person tells a story with original artwork behind.. Emphasis shifts from writing to oracy.

Definitions:

• Media Fluency as opposed to Media Literacy
• The “Green” Screen: a room behind the stage where musicians prepare before their performances; Office supply: Green sticky – paint. Put green stickies over the outlets; Paint is better and then it’s still there. The wall stays and says – Use me… Contrast to your colors…: monochromatic color that I am not wearing…
• Literacy: consuming and producing the media forms of the day, whatever they are. To be TV literate, you have to make Television. Multimedia collages. There has been a shift in the “media ecology” and stories are everwhere.
• Fluency: When you can analyze the previews/ads and then you can create your own. Coke doing storytelling with their employees… Selling an idea. How do you sell yourself? The viewer needs to be transformed as you watch… You can never understand how media persuades until you have used media to persuade. We have been doing it with words forever. [An essay with a central thesis and support it]
• Levels of Character transformation: The stuff that is truly compelling is hard to explain.

1. Physical/kinesthetic – strenght, dexterity, realizing potential
2. Inner strength – courage, realizing potential
3. Emotional – maturity, realization
4. Moral – conscience, realizing “right” (Schindler develops his list)
5. Psychological – insight, self-awareness, realization, revelation
6. Social – realizing responsibility
7. Intellectua/creative – learning, problem solving, critical thinking, realizing new understandings (curriculum – problem, discovery, etc.)
8. Spiritual – awakening, revelation

• VPS: Visual Portrait of the Story
• The Story Core – is essentially the essential question.
• Visually differentiated text: Change the structure of the essay: http://www.jasonohler.com/storytelling/beyondwords.cfm Word based media form.

Resources:

• http://www.jasonOhler.com/beyondwords
• http://subtechst.blogspot.com/
• http://mat2007distance.blogspot.com : With graduate class, Blogs who link to media (YouTub), text (Googledocs), powerpoints (slideshare.net (not tabs or spaces well))
• McKee’s Story (list of movies in the back)…;
• Joseph Campbell – A Call to Story… A Call to Adventure.
• Program to create (go to site, built-in for imovie: VIdMix)
• Stories are all we are, Thomas King
• http://www.jasonohler.com/Resources/NomeDST.cfm (walks through the Green screen process)
• Scott County, Kentucky – Commitment to Digital Storytelling, based on backward planning
• Youtube: How to Animate a Rolling Ball (email to get software that would do it). Problem: The ball did not roll, the transformation – use a formula to solve the problem.
• Jason Ohler’s YouTube – Ed philosophy movies.. My Teaching Vision…
• School Train.mov on YouTube (Language Arts Teacher – unit on poetry… metaphor…
• Animation: Use Flash
• Macromedia – Studio Suite – Contribute – Manage and access digital content. [NVU - open source]
• Open Office (free version of MSOffice)