Andrew A
Andrew A
Jul 24, 2017 · 4 min read

Reflection for Week 7 of Class INTE5340

I found all three class videos this week very thought provoking. They were called Mobile Storytelling | Digital Campfires | Evolution of Storytelling. As I recently took a class for my teaching degree on literacy I was particularly impressed by the Mobile Storytelling video and the concept of young writers becoming very popular authors, not because some adults decide they have talent, but rather because their peers (or whomever wants to read their work) drive the demand for their work. With a shortage of written stories for youth, especially by youth, this is revolutionary for youth literacy. In h. there was some discussion as to whether the young writers who became popular had editors making sure their work was well written, but several people made the point that if the work was not well written, fellow teens would undoubtedly point it out to each other, especially in a digital space. I also think we adults need to be very careful trying to edit this type of work, or these spaces where young people have digital dialog, because we risk ruining it, which is the last thing society needs. The Digital Campfires video also highlighted how young people across the world are able to communicate with each other more and more, and begin to understand each other, which is crucial to us ever having peace in the world. There was some skepticism in h. about how widespread this digital dialog between American teens and teens in developing countries really is, but we have to start somewhere. And finally, the Evolution of Storytelling video frankly confused me a bit, but I heard loud and clear the conclusion that “I believe we have reached the limit of what we can understand about the world by uni-sequential formats such as books, movies, and tv shows.” I agree that it is wonderful with the evolution of digital storytelling that a “new genre of storytelling with multiple points of view” has been created. Anything we can do to break the cycle of white hegemony is fantastic, but I still think uni-sequential formats have a role to play, and I also worry that too often the multiple points of view for deciding how stories playout will still be dominated by the masses. But that has something to do with capitalism as well, which in the U.S. at least, isn’t changing anytime soon.

So getting to the reflection questions for this week: “Please define Digital Dialog & Soliloquies in your own words. How do these fit in the landscape of Digital Storytelling & Learning?” For my second assignment for Week 7 I decided to answer these questions via a digital soliloquy of my own.

I forgot to define these terms in my own words in the video, so I would say a digital dialogue is any form of digital communication between at least two people, in which both people have an opportunity to communicate. A digital soliloquy I see as similar to a monologue, in which a person is digitally sharing their thoughts, but not expecting much, if any, dialogue from the audience. As I alluded to in the video, I think Facebook can be a digital soliloquy as per Facebook norms responses are often very short, or just a click of the “Like” button.

Speaking of Facebook, I grabbed a couple of my photos off Facebook to experiment with for my Daily Create this week. Although the app provided does the conversion of photos to abstract art, I took some time experimenting with various photos to get some artwork I was happy with. I really like the way the orange tree from Cambodia came out. The colors and the round shapes fit well with the tree I think.

For my 2nd assignment this week I completed the “Fork It” assignment in which I used Knight Lab’s Timeline creator. I like the idea behind this program, and its ease of use in that all you have to do it fill out an Excel spreadsheet. But I had some big problems with this program. At first I used links to all my photos from Google Drive and Facebook, and none of them worked. I then read the program fine print, and only links to images from certain websites are allowed. So annoying. So I had to upload all my photos to Flickr instead and I got it to work. I also found the formatting options very limited. But for a quick and dirty timeline this program gets the job done. I could see my future students using this in a History class in various ways.

And for my critique this week I picked on the Google Cardboard VR. As we used this set-up in some classes this past semester I had some personal experience with it and had plenty to say:

And finally, here are some of my classmates posts I liked this week:

Danielle had much more positive things to say than I did, but she hasn’t actually used the set-up yet. So we’ll see how she feels once she actually gets her hands on one.

I also continue to be impressed by Dr. Yap’s work. I thought the following assignment was spot on message wise, and included fantastic graphics as well. She really is one of the all-stars of this class, and maybe the MVP!

And last, but definitely not least, I found Anne’s case study on Story Corps, and especially the story she shared of a mother and daughter very touching. I just can’t say enough good things about Story Corps, and I appreciated that Anne included quotes from the creator about why he thought Story Corps had been successful. I liked his point about how powerful only audio is for such powerful stories.

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