Techszewski

A Wrinkle in Times

You that know part of the book where Meg hears her muffled father's voice speaking to her from behind the grip of IT? That's kind of like blogging in China. I haven't been able to post to this blog for months now. Not even sure this will get thru. It is almost 2010, right? And China did send a man to the moon recently. Why can't I get to my blog? The two issues are thinly connected, but still I complain.

I have been blogging on my local school-based blogs. Teach Me This focuses on my edu-gaming work, while my Middle School Tech Tips shares what I do as a technology integration specialist.

Until I relocate or find a way around IT, I'll have to post there.

Context Is Everything

I had hit upon something really useful to blog about regarding research, but in between dinner and an episode of Law and Order it's vanished from my radar. Today, I was on fire, writing and tracking down websites related to my thesis research. I think that my epiphany was that you really need to Google a variety of variations of your main topic. In my case, I've Googled 'digital storytelling' dozens of times, along with 'multimedia storytelling,' 'interactive storytelling,' 'digital narrative,' 'narrative technology,' 'storytelling technology,' 'storytelling in education,' 'storytelling tools,' 'storytelling technology,' but I think that tonight I hit the jackpot - 'digital media in education.' It made so much sense once I followed a few resources. A perfect category for what digital storytelling would fall under, with regard to the proper educational context. And then of course, 'digital storytelling in education' yielded resources I have not reviewed yet.

Earlier in the day(while watching my New England Patriots stomp the Colts), I had been compiling a list of software tools that support the core phases of a digital storytelling project. A major tenet of my thesis is that nearly all of the software tools for digital storytelling do next to nothing to support the hardest part - writing the story, structuring the basic story, figuring out what you want to say(not sure how to categorize this part). I plan to create a table of all the commercial software that targets students/novice multimedia producers. These are the basic stages of a creating a digital story, not necessarily followed strictly in this order:

• Writing the story script
• Locating, Creating, and Importing Media Elements - could call this Asset Acquisition?
• Storyboarding
• Recording the Voice Over
• Text/Titling
• Adding Effects, Transitions
• Export story for sharing with audience

The major categories of software that support the above digital storytelling stages:

• Multimedia Authoring
• Screen Writing
• Slideshow Creator
• Audio Capture
• Presentation
• Animation
• Multimedia Scrapbook *this may not be that relevant but it does provide digital story opps

Digital media production has always had professional level tools, such as Avid or Adobe Premiere, for  editing large video projects, but schools are now benefitting from the scaled down non-linear video editing programs aimed at the novice video editor. The 'Multimedia Authoring' category could be broken down into 'Non-linear Video Editing' as a specific category that makes a distinction between programs that have a timeline to construct your story along and programs line PowerPoint or HyperStudio that provide for an interactive digital story.

The major players in the digital storytelling in schools/educational multimedia producation market:

• iMovie
• Final Cut Express
• Video Studio
• MovieMaker
• MovieWorks
• VideoBlender, MediaBlender, ImageBlender
• HyperStudio
• Photo Story
• Brain Glow
• Quick Time Pro
• eZedia

A Long Siesta

This blog was created to record and share my reactions to going back to grad school in hopes of advancing my interactive design skills, specifically in the area of digital storytelling. If you've read any of the posts, you know that it's been a challenging road. I stopped posting back in November feeling that it was best to just shut-up and get my work done. I had lost interest in blogging also when no one was commenting. As much as I think blogs are a great tool for academic researchers to chart the progression of their interests, I still wanted some outside interaction. And then of course there was the lack of time issue.

The second semester was not a great improvement, but it was entirely more successful in terms of what I produced. Being a very product-oriented person, I needed to feel like I was creating and completing what I started. Here's an overview of the projects: (I think they're all in Flash, so you'll need the latest plug-in)

1. Interactive Timeline for the PBS POV documentary "Love and Diane"

This was a fantastic experience! We were asked to enhance the traditional linear narrative form of a documentary film and the timeline proved to the most versitile vehicle in an interactive environment. I borrowed it for another project. What made this such a rewarding experience was not that we completed something that actually worked and was used by a popular media outlet, but the way the project team worked together. I learned a lot from observing our project leader, Karyn. She never doubted that we could complete this project in the two month window we had. That's such an essential part of working on a team. You have to trust and believe in everyone. We had a great set of collective skills. The entire first iteration had to be recoded from scratch because we chose to go with Flash's new progressive download feature. The gain in video quality was worth it. The learning curve was steep for the ActionScript, but Engin was amazing in decyphering it all. This project studio may have sparked a team that'll produce some more stunning interactive environments.

2. Mapping My Life is the second project for Michael Mateas's Interactive Narrative class. I set out to create a map of my life with map pins that link to the places my family has lived, the places that've contributed to my education, etc. It's got a lot of potential for demonstrating a new form of digital storytelling. Michael kept pushing me to go beyond the 'multimedia scrapbook' and I'm glad he did. Even though at first I felt that telling an autobiography via a timeline or in a geographical way was engaging enough. I'll still need to work out the navigation issues of whether it's better to have a timeline with icons or use the global roll-over idea. It's hard to see what the real narrative is that I'm telling about myself. I kind of like that I'm leaving it open to the user to follow certain links and decide for themselves.

3. A Place at the Table is many things. Right now it's an interactive narrative about the experience of urban students who attend school in mostly white suburban towns. I've worked on this idea for a few years after noticing that my students who were bussed from the city out to the 'burbs had very little representation. I set out to see how technology could be leveraged to represent the story of integrated school experiences. This iteration presents the scenario where you can bring four people to a table for a virtual dialog on issues related to integrated schools. Depending on who you bring to the table, a different dialog will be heard from each person, eg. if persons A, E, D, G are at the table each person will speak to the Urban Myths theme. If persons B, E, F, G are at the table the Benefits of Diversity theme will be played for each person. I haven't figured out the coding to actually make the multiple combinations work, but you get the idea. There are many plans to develop this environment into something that allows students, parents, teachers, community members to add their two cents in story form using multimedia tools. Also, there are plans to develop the environment so that students in other integrated schools can contribute to the database of stories.

4. A Place at the Table timeline is meant to be the precursor to the actual 'table' part of 'A Place at the Table.' I realized that I needed to set the context for the need to have a virual dialog on the issues surrounding integrated schools. I liked the impact of the Love and Diane interactive timeline so much that I borrowed the design and set to work stripping out the Love and Diane video clips and putting in interviews clips of peoples' high school experiences regarding race. I had a great group of undergrads helping me collect interviews from a wide span of ages and backgrounds. Even though the interviews are not directly related to the Boston school integration challenges, the issues and themes are still relevant.

5. Teacher, Teacher was the object-oriented assignment for 6313. I thought we created a very engaging interactive environment that scripted the user to click on the various items on the teacher's desk to effect the three students' varying moods. I also learned that the old adage 'three heads are better than one' is really true. Not that I doubted it, but it's hard to ask people to come on board to help develop an idea. It was fun to build off my first OO project.

6. www.teachstory.com is finally up and running smoothly - if you have the Flash 7 plug-in. I reworked the entire .fla so that each scene takes place in one frame of Flash. In non-Flash lingo, I simplified my project so that instead of having twenty pages to organize I only have one. The video clips are not great quality. I'll need to rework those eventually. If you include video on the web, make it the best quality you can - and right now that's using Flash progressive download. Very little wait time and superior quality. I have to include a credit to Maria for taking the digital photos of the chalkboard. It really makes the point I wanted to convey about my teaching background.

7. Digital Storytelling with high school students at Westlake High. This was my first time working extensively with high school students. It confirmed that I definitely want to teach a high school class soon. There really wasn't a big difference from working with elementary age kids. Same kinds of issues of needing to model what you expected them to do and then keeping them on task.

We did two projects over the span of six months, both using PowerPoint. I'm not a huge fan of PP, but it was the software most widely available on the most computers. The first project was to have the kids effectively use images, audio and video clips in a multimedia presentation on Japanese American heritage as a culminating project after they had read the book "Picture Bride" and researched a topic related to Japanese American history. They all had used PP before, so teaching them how to add audio and video clips wasn't hard. I wanted to demonstrate that a multimedia presentation was a kind of digital storytelling, that an effective presentation using images, text, audio and video was a powerful way to share what you learned about a topic.

The main lesson learned is that you always need more time than you think. Andre, the fantastic teacher I collaborated with, was very flexible and interested in learning new ways to use technology in the English classroom. The partnership worked well because I already had a teaching background so he didn't need to worry too much about how I'd handle his class. We communicated regularly via email and during his planning time, but there are always things that come up that compete for the time you allot for adding something new to the curriculum. We were good about setting deadlines for the different stages of the project, but with multimedia you can't always control time like you can with other types of lessons.

It's hard to assess how successful I was at teaching multimedia storytelling to the class. Their projects for the most part were very rough. Only about one or two students really got what I trying to demonstrate. I don't think it was a matter of my instruction. I'd like to think it was because the students were not used to 'telling stories' and that contributed more to the loose final presentations. All technology projects have a learning curve and that was evident in this process. Was it naive to think that each student would create a dynamic, well planned, effective multimedia presentation? Yes, they're students not interactive designers. That's what's often lost in the process of attempting to use technology effectively in the classroom. We forget the wide range of technological literacy of students.

As a sidenote, it was interesting to notice that even when I created a resource page of links to sites that had images, audio and video clips for their presentations, they still wanted to use Ask Jeeves or other search tools to find media. I learned also that it's still hard for students to take advantage of the audio and video clips available via on-line digital archives at the Library of Congress and other museum sites. Figuring out how to download the clips and then getting them in the a format that works in PP on a Mac and PC is very tricky. If students are really going to make good use of the web during school they can't waste time with all of the technical challenges of getting the media they want to use.

Praxis of Techno-Poetry

I'm not sure if I used the word praxis correctly. I remember reading it on another blog and thought it might work for this post about an idea/desire I have to use all of this technology that permeates my day to somehow help me imbibe in poetry on a daily basis.

My idea. Nothing too far fetched really. I just want a database of poems that sends one out a few times a week via email. Maybe via a listserv, that's the important part, sharing poems with other people. I think of all the email we get on a daily basis: admin reminders, pleas for coding help, posts from various listservs and of course the spam, a poem every now and then would be welcomed. A little poetry each day is an important thing. I keep thinking of that piece of software I saw years ago. In My Own Voice by Sunburst. Great way of extending the poems via music, video clips of famous people reading the poems. I wonder if the Favorite Poems project is on-line and if the movie clips are easily viewed on-line. And then this could be expanded to be a story database that sends out a story a week. That's something that I'd like to build or have someone build for me. I wonder what program is best suited for developing it.

I bet there's a way for blogs to help people display poems in an interesting way on their sites. I noticed that Flash components haven't been included in anyone's sites. Audio blogs is obviously a great way to share poetry. That would be a cool way to add your voice to cyberspace.

I just thought of a cool project for the kids at the Computer Clubhouse. As a way to introduce blogging to them. Ask them to find a poem, or even a rap, that they like. Record them reciting the poem. Have them add a short post about why they like it, maybe an illustration or their photo to go alongside it. Having a blog would be an empowering thing for kids because it gives them virtual space, and space for self-expression for teens is always at a premium.

Here's the Billy Collins poems I found this afternoon that I liked. He's coming to GA Tech this April to speak.

The Waitress

She brings a drink to the table
pivots, and turns away
with a smile

and soon she brings me
a menu, smiles,
and takes the empy glass away.

She brings me a fillet of sole
on a plate with parsley
and thin wheels of lemon,

then more bread in a basket,
smiling as she walks away,
then comes back

to see if everything is OK
to fill my glass with wine,
turning away

then circling back to my table
until she is every waitress
who has ever served me,

and every waiter, too,
young and old,
the eager and the sleepy ones alike.

I hold my fork in the air–
the blades of the fans
turn slowly on the ceiling–

and I begin to picture them all,
living and dead,
gathered together for one night

in an amphitheater, or armory
or some vast silvery ballroom
where they have come

to remove their bow ties,
to hang up their red jackets and aprons,
and now they are having a cigarette

or dancing with each other,
turning slowly in one another's arms
to a five-piece, rented band.

And that is all I can think about
after I pay the bill,
leave a large, sentimental tip,

then walk into the fluorescent streets,
collar up against the chill–
all the waitresses and waiters of my life,

until the night makes me realize
that this place where they pace and dance
under colored lights,

is made of nothing but autumn leaves,
red, yellow, gold,
waiting for a sudden gust of wind

to scatter it all
into the dark spaces
beyond these late-night, practically empty streets.

...Billy Collins, The Waitress from Sailing Alone Around the Room