educating for the journey

With my new job i don’t have time to post anymore…but i am still hoping one day i will…until that day - here is this week’s NewsFlash…

 

“In unsettled times like these, when world cultures, countries and religions are facing off in violent confrontations, we could benefit from the reminder that storytelling is common to all civilizations. Whether in the form of a sprawling epic or a pointed ballad, the story is our most ancient method of making sense out of experience and of preserving the past.”
- William Collins

Myself and virtually everyone I have ever spoken to have had their lives enriched by people who were wonderful storytellers. I know this first hand; both of my grandfathers could certainly hold their own: R.J. was a carpenter with just the right poem flawlessly memorized for every occasion, and Willard was a church minister sharing his stories with his congregations weekly. Modern technology is offering wonderful new ways of sharing stories, and some CMS teachers are embracing this opportunity. In this the CMS community’s seventy-fifth year it is natural to think of the stories that have developed and are developing here.

Every community has a memory of itself.
Not a history, nor an archive, nor an authoritative record…
A living memory, an awareness of a collective identity woven of a thousand stories. (http://www.storycenter.org/index1.html)

Digital storytelling[*] gives new meaning to the trait “voice” and is a powerful tool in helping students find theirs. For the next six weeks the technology department is challenging (and offering assistance to) all of CMS to find ways to explore “voice”; from the past, from the present and from the future.

Here are some links you can use to learn more about the opportunities that digital storytelling present:

Center for Digital Storytelling
http://www.storycenter.org/index1.html

Educational Uses for Digital Storytelling
http://www.coe.uh.edu/digital-storytelling/

Digital Storytelling
http://electronicportfolios.com/digistory/index.html

Digital Storytelling Finds its place in the classroom
http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan02/banaszewski.htm

Digital Storytelling
http://www.teachingteachers.com/story.htm

Some Tools:
Microsoft Photo Story 3, Windows MovieMaker, Apple iMovie, Animoto, Flickr, Audacity, and hundreds more!

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[*] a wide variety of new media production practices. What best describes our approach is its emphasis on personal voice and facilitative teaching methods. Many of the stories made in our workshops are directly connected to the images collected in life’s journey. But our primary concern is encouraging thoughtful and emotionally direct writing (http://www.storycenter.org/index1.html)