Why Teaching Digital Storytelling is Important: Vicki Davis Interviews Fred Haas

Every Classroom Matters With the Cool Cat Teacher (Vicki Davis): Bam Radio Network - Twitterati Channel

Posted on iTunes on February 3, 2015 under the title "Why Teaching Digital Storytelling is Important". This has been clipped.

Transcript:

Bam Radio Network. Welcome to “Every Classroom Matters” this is Vicki Davis, the Cool Cat Teacher ,and you're listening to the show for busy teachers everywhere about the best practices that matter. Let's get started.

Vicki: Why would a teacher move from teaching English to teaching digital storytelling? Weill, teacher Fred Haas from Massachusetts has done just that thing. Fred, welcome to the show and tell us a little bit about why you decided to move from teaching English to teaching digital media and digital storytelling.

Fred: You know, there were a number of factors that were part of it. I originally, before I was a teacher, I was a little bit of a late-comer to the teaching profession and I have a Bachelor's of Arts in theater and I worked in the film industry a little bit before I actually made the switch to teaching. I always say I work in the film industry long enough to know I didn't want to continue working in the film industry. So I went into teaching and English was the most natural corollary for all of the work that I had done previously and in all of the study I had done previously. But in some ways I'm sorta coming full circle here because I'm back to sorta, how do you produce stories in multiple mediums that communicate powerfully. And so that was really one of the biggest allures, I think.

Vicki: If I were a teacher and you know of course when we start the year we meet with the parents and we kind of tell them what to expect. If I were a parent coming in and you were my child's teacher what would you say my child was going to learn in your course and why is digital storytelling important?

Fred: Well first and foremost I think more and more the ability to tell stories, the ability to share stories and that sort of narrative component is just incredibly important. It affords students the opportunity to be considerably more creative than simply responding to literature, as an example, but they’re cultivating the stories. It empowers them because, especially if they are personal stories because you are basically sanctioning, your story is important. What you have to share is important. So I think on a fundamental level that is a huge part. But then the other aspect of the class is that on some level it’s kind of a technology workshop. So, you know, the students are all afforded laptops but we make a lot of assumptions about how well they can use them at the onset. So by the time they get through my class, I think they are definitively able to do far more with that device than they were prior to walking in the door.

Vicki: So let's finish up with “how do your students publish and how do they have audience?” because audience is vital. So let's finish up with that.

Fred: Sure. They all come in the door and I get them set up to use blogs. So we use blogs as the basis platform for them to share. We start with the blog and everybody gets a blog and that is for publishing. So now the next challenge really is to help them learn how to promote what they are publishing and for me to actually sort of leverage the teachers, educators, and other students that I know to build an audience for all of those students. But you know building an audience and producing the product is - those are two very different challenges.

Vicki: They but you know it's interesting because even having an audience of one besides yourself does something for students. When they see one person has seen their video it's fascinating to see how they respond and how much meaning goes into those videos.

Fred: Absolutely. Even the students just looking at each other's work repeatedly - it can be really powerful.

Vicki: Well Fred thanks for sharing with us today and I hope that all of you will remember that video is the modern essay. How are you having your students tell digital stories and are you making room in your curriculum for this? And there are systems and methods for all of this process that you can find online. And as you learn about it this is something all of us can do. So thanks for listening and thank you Fred for being with us today.

You've been listening to “Every Classroom Matters”. I'm Vicki Davis the Cool Cat Teacher and I'm here to help so give me a shoutout on Twitter and thank you for making the best practices here on “Every Classroom Matters” part of your busy day.

This program is produced by Accretive Media for the BAM radio network. Thanks for listening.