Here's the link to my project:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8nFquYNsDRDVGhfV3YxYkxzajA&usp=sharing&tid=0B95edAai0DRELTVOMEUtcXRpdHM
I chose to create a learning artifact. I updated a project I had done in my own classroom to incorporate digital storytelling. The artifact is a Voicethread narrative: https://voicethread.com/share/5473742/ The profile was written by a student of mine last semester, I just recorded it and added the visuals and sounds.
The goal of the project is for students to practice making authorial choices with the added dimension of audio, visual, and digital materials.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8nFquYNsDRDVGhfV3YxYkxzajA&usp=sharing&tid=0B95edAai0DRELTVOMEUtcXRpdHM
I chose to create a learning artifact. I updated a project I had done in my own classroom to incorporate digital storytelling. The artifact is a Voicethread narrative: https://voicethread.com/share/5473742/ The profile was written by a student of mine last semester, I just recorded it and added the visuals and sounds.
The goal of the project is for students to practice making authorial choices with the added dimension of audio, visual, and digital materials.
Evan,
ReplyDeleteWell done. I love the idea of focusing on Morrison's transitions between time periods as a model skill. Being new to VoiceThread, I also appreciate seeing the platform thoughtfully used within the context of an assignment. I'm not sold on the value of VoiceThread for student work/presentations, but I have been considering it as a potential medium for creative work - which is exactly how you've brought it in.
As far as the specifics of the assignment, I think it's engaging and could lead to some really awesome student work. Obviously, it would come at the end of an entire unit, during which your class will have clearly focused on Morrison's style and technique. So long as there is adequate exploration and examination of Morrison's subtle use of transitions between time periods, then the assignment seems ready to be presented to a class.
As I read the prompt, there were only a few questions that came up for me. For one, I was confused by the use of the term "profile." At first, I didn't realize that it is referred to as a specific device/literary structure. To help clarify that you're looking for a particular type of narrative, you could put the term in bold or italics - set it apart. Even more, you could give a brief description of the term and how it looks. Seeing as I am unfamiliar with Beloved, I wasn't sure whether a profile is a piece of descriptive writing about a person or a narrative featuring a person or their own narrative from their perspective. What are the elements that make up a "profile"? Of course, like the time-period transitions, I imagine that "profile" would have been the focus of extensive class discussion as well, so that students were aware of the term as a form of writing.
Also, I wasn't sure about the use of pictures (until I saw the sample artifact). Are the pictures supposed to be of the subject? Are they supposed to be photographs or can they be drawings? Are they supposed to be original, and if not, do they need to be cited? Some of these details might be helpful to include within the requirements section of the prompt as well.
Other than that, I thought the underlining was very helpful, in order to let your students know which parts of the prompt were most important to focus on. I also really enjoy your casual tone (e.g. your use of "ToMo" and parenthetical asides). It doesn't present the assignment flippantly, but it's definitely fun.
The most clarifying element of your project was the artifact. I wonder if you would present sample artifacts to your class as well, to help them get a better sense of what you're looking for. After watching your artifact, I also reconsidered the project requirements. Perhaps 4-5pp. (pages, I'm assuming) and ~5 min are not quite enough to fully develop a narrative profile with at least 3 different (overlapping) time periods. Then again, I may feel that way only because the example you provide is far longer than that.
Your artifact, by the way, is beautifully written. Really impressive work. How old was the student who wrote it?
ReplyDeleteMy only other thoughts were on the digital affordances and drawbacks of the medium itself. More than anything, I wonder why one should use VoiceThread as opposed to a live presentation/in-class reading with a simple image slideshow in the background. I feel like an in-class reading could serve the same function but be a bit more engaging in terms of presentation. Then again, there were elements of the digital format that enhanced the work. The comments, like you suggest, could be potentially useful in gathering student feedback and even analysis - maybe in a similar way we're doing our feedback for this project; each project could have three reviewers. (I wholeheartedly agree with you, though, that the SoundCloud format would be far superior to the current VoiceThread model.) I also think the background noises in the restaurant scenes and the dance scene brought those scenes to life. That, of course, could not be done in class without a recording. Similarly, I liked your suggestion of having multiple voices. This could be another advantage to the digital recordings - maybe there should be a collaborative part of the assignment, in order for students to take advantage of the opportunity for multiple voices. Just a thought. (I still, however, would want every student to write their own profiles, so I don't know how the collaboration piece would fit in.)
As opposed to the background sounds, I found the imagery to be a bit confusing. I really like the visual element, but I was a bit thrown off by the images when the story would shift time frames - since the images didn't really correspond to different eras. This made tracking the distinct time periods in the story especially difficult. To a degree, the images also felt a bit distracting (namely, the board room scene). I don't know how to resolve this issue, beyond perhaps adding a requirement that images should correspond roughly to the shifts in time period/setting.
My final thought is on the "experimentation and energy" part of the rubric. This is the biggest issue that comes up in assessment (at least for me); how do we objectively evaluate student effort? The problem here is that whether or not the piece shows "effort and interest" is a matter of interpretation. It's a subjective criterion. And evaluating student work on how "good" of a read it is would likely give the students who have a knack for creative writing the upper hand (even though they may not have tried as hard as one of the less creative-writing-y students). Thus (as always), we need to figure out how we objectively determine a student's effort (or abandon the criterion). What are the concrete elements? Length? Complexity and variation of sentences? Diversity of characters and voices? This, I don't know. But I do know that we all need to be more specific in how we determine whether or not someone's work shows "effort."
All in all, an engaging project. I think you've established a lot to work with a raise valid issues about the use of digital storytelling media in English class. Do you think you'll implement something like this in the future?