Digital Storytelling - The End

Listen to my summary of digital storytelling and how it influences our learning in this podcast.

Here are some of my greatest hits this semester that represent multi-media usage (audio, video, graphics, social and web):

The 10 Things Challenge was really fun and I engaged the public via social media to accomplish it:

I enjoyed the photography challenges of the Daily Creates. I learned some new skills and the sometimes political statements I could make with these:

"Ruby Red Grapefruit in My Paloma"

I enjoyed trying my hand (literally!) at this sketchnote project:

I liked learning how to use Prezi for the Blast From the Past challenge which allowed me to visit my childhood home and have a bit of fun.

My final project comes last. This took quite a bit of time as I did my own photography, created my own GIFs, created a new website, built a storyline via blog and photo gallery, recorded a podcast interview, and edited a remix photo using my favorite Costa Rica vacation photo from the recent trip I took. 

The learning theory I most appreciate is Paper’s Construction-ism (learning by creating and making something, particularly in a multi-platform way). This is where the learning theory meets the real world and makes things stick as a learner. This happened as we were stretched all semester long to engage and create using new media to express ourselves and to engage the material in new ways.

My greatest take away from the course is that there are many, varied stories about ourselves and about every other human being on this planet. Listening to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was really eye-opening and a powerful reminder of the danger of single stories and how it creates racism and generalization of cultures. Human dignity demands that we all have more than one story and that we learn more than one story for others.

This course was different from any that I have taken in this program before – the learning goals were the same and creating things using different media was the same – but it was done online instead of in the confines of the Canvas EMS. I got used to this, but was uncomfortable with it at first. I think it was a great course, however, and really pushed me to expand my useage of various media (Twitter, sketchnoting, podcasting, photography, videography, etc.). I’m not sure I would change a thing!