Digital Storytelling

I HAVE HEARD A PEEP

Something that most people who aren't around me often may not know, is that I am somewhat of a country girl. Our family currently has a coop fo laying hens and some angus cattle on the way. I grew up in this world. Hauling hay, driving tractors, putting up fence, fixing anything around the house in need of repair, and other chores that came with the territory. But, come spring time there is always a fun and exciting experience awaiting: baby chicks!

Each spring, we replenish our coop by ordering another set of laying hens to ensure that we will continue to have eggs throughout the year, even with loss of our older chickens who have been around for a few rodeos. As a classroom teacher, this is always a great time to show students something other than mathematics in a textbook or worksheet lesson. So when they arrive, the chicks make a short debut in my classroom so that my students learn about math in the real world as well as some other real life skills that may come in handy some day. With this experience comes lots of questions from students who have lived their whole lives in urban and suburban areas without much knowledge of how this process works and I enjoy seeing their awe and wonder as they hear the words "I got them in the mail" come out of my math when talking about the chicks!

In Clark and Mayer's chapter 9 on The Personalization Principle, they focus on creating eLearning opportunities that personalize the learning environment for students to feel more comfortable and become more engaged in the process. The authors assert "that people learn better when e‐learning environments use a conversational style of writing or speaking (including using first‐ and second‐person language), polite wording for feedback and advice, and a friendly human voice" and I tried to put as much of their suggestion into practice as I could in a short assignment on creating a digital story. The video I created is aimed at students in late elementary or early middle school who are curious about where chicks come from and how they arrive at local farms and co-ops around the nation. By using a friendly voice and vocabulary accessible to young students, I tried to embody the conversation that may occur in a classroom between the teacher and the students about this process. I also utilized stock footage of various parts of the process as well as footage I personally took to document this process. Together, these clips build a visual representation of the journey the chicks took to get from their original hatching in Bancroft, IA to our home in Houston, TX.

As I was reading the chapter this week and pondering what/how I would create a product for our digital storytelling assignment, I could help but immediately relate this to the current social media craze TikTok. I specifically thought of a TikTok video I had made the day I picked the chicks up so that I could share the journey with my students. I think utilizing social media in this way is a form of digital storytelling in which the creator is placing together specifically curated clips in order to assist the viewer in joining them on that journey. Below, I have included the digital storytelling video I created as well as the TikTok video I am referencing so that one can see how the two are related and hopefully build the understanding of how readily accessible social media tools can be utilized for educational purposes.

Reference:
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). E-learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning