Week 5-Finding Voice

Elsa Pranger
Jul 10, 2017 · 5 min read

This week was filled with discussion surrounding what it means to promote and find a diversity of voice through the means of digital storytelling.

I did things a little out of order compared to a normal week for me. That was both good and bad by the end of the week. I felt weird doing my DAily Create today, but with all that had to be done this week, and unsure of what I was going to do for my assignments, I did things as they came to me!


Before I did anything, however, I watched and discussed the weekly playlist in Canvas. This week was especially interesting for me to watch these videos as it directly relates to my other grad school Education courses and we had already watched the TED Talk clip in another class. Just like the theme for this week, I was able to get a fresh perspective on this same video that I had already seen. It was over the importance of avoiding a single story narrative in our lives, and that it is so easy to surround ourselves withe like-minded individuals who share our perspectives. This is incredibly dangerous as we are naive to our naiveté and we do not get to experience the joys that can be found through a diverse range of thoughts. Furthermore, each of us carries unique values, experiences, and circumstances that shape our stories, so being able to share those and grow from others is an amazing thing. This all tied into our theme this week of bringing those voices out through digital stories. I really enjoyed this weeks playlist.

My Critique was done earlier this week and was also connected to the theme of Finding Voice. It was over a group of students and professionals who collaborated on a website called the Autobiography of Jane Erye. As someone who has enjoyed this story, it peaked my interest. Read my Critique here:

I was a little disappointed with this collaboration, but I did appreciate the idea behind it and the work they had put into it. This was an interesting tie into the theme as it was an actress portrayal of this characters voice, but all done in the modern age. It was almost a remix on finding voice. This also allowed for creativity to be done interpreting someone else’s perspective, another key component to not sticking to one single story.


When it came time to decide which projects to do I knew I wanted to do one that was a little more ridiculous and another one that was a more serious persay. The first assignment I did was the Radio Commerical where I had to try to sell a product. For this, I decided to do a sarcastic spin on one of my favorite Colorado (originally Chicago) restaurants…WHITE FENCE FARM. My boyfriend tells me I am 90 at heart, and folks, if this restaurant choice doesn’t speak to that I do not know what will. It was so fun to play a spin off of everything I love about this place. For me, it was very personal and brought back a ton of great memories with my grandparents. The place itself is kind of ridiculous though, so it was fun to kind of poke fun and do an ode to a dreamy place! Listen to this super fun project-

For the second assignment this week, I chose to do a Twitter essay. As a big Twitter skeptic, I was a little more than hesitant to do this. One of the ‘ideas of inspiration’ for this second assignment was to tell the tale of a historical figure on the path of the heroes journey. So, what did I do? I tried to sum up the whole reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England in like 5 tweets. Again, as someone who rambles, this was no easy feat. One top of all that, I had to pick the most significant aspects of her life to put on display in said ‘essay.’ This was really fun for me. I enjoyed it because it spanned over multiple days and allowed me time to brainstorm and continue the trail of her life as I pleased. I will say, I was not very witty when it came to the actual wording of my tweets. By the time I got all three of my required hashtags in, I was left with minimal characters and a heck of a lot to say.

I started with the fact that she almost died as a teenager, and as a person outside the Catholic tradition and faith, she was little chance she would reign at all. Furthermore, all it took was the signing off of the Queen that Elizabeth was committing treason, and she would have been burned at the sake.

Once her step-sister Mary got extremely ill, she was so close to shutting down any hope of Elizabeth getting the throne, but she let it happen. THIS was her call to action.

The road was a definite learning curve for Queen Elizabeth as she wanted to make everyone happy, but she herself was not Catholic and found no King fit to marry.

The people had little faith, but alas, her crowning moment and peak came when she defeated Spain and took true reign over her people!

She declared herself ‘The Virgin Queen’ and said she was married to England. Overall, a Bad@**!

Overall, I enjoyed this assignment. It was tricky in certain aspects, but not necessarily in the creative side of physically manipulating something. I enjoyed the straightforwardness of it. I also liked how it tied into what else I was doing this week by kind of giving voice to a historical figure and sharing my own voice and views on things not strictly tied to my teaching job.


Throughout the week, there was also good discussion surrounding the article about developing and sharing student voice through these digital story realms. I really enjoyed reading everyones responses and what their perspectives were. (Yay for multiple voices!) This whole idea that our program revolves around is such a tricky one and I do not know the correct answer. I do know though, as a student in this course now, that there are definitely students out there who are extremely creative and would do an excellent job displaying content knowledge, just like the student examples in the article, through a digital means and not necessarily the ‘traditional’ way. While I do think this is great, the balance is something I struggle with and look forward to continuing to explore. I do want every child to succeed and how that looks probably will be very different given the diverse set of voices our students have!


Finally, I made my Daily Create for the week. This week, I got a new perspective on things. My dog, Belle, got the couch and I got the floor, and I took an ordinary thing- my dog- and saw it in a new perspective. It was hilarious and hard to get her to sit still!

YAY for Week 5-Finding Voices. I really appreciated the content of this week. I look forward to exploring this topic more and really gaining other perspectives from my peers. One thing I do know is that the single story is dangerous so it is probably to everyones benefit if they do what suits them, and do it well. Not everyone can do what others can, and this is the beauty of diverse sets of voices!

FIN

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