The Convergence of Digital Storytelling and Popular Culture in Graduate Education

Digital Storytelling is being used in a variety of ways in the University of Houston’s College of Education. This article provides and overview of an innovative approach that two instructors developed to use Digital Storytelling by pairing an Instructional Technology graduate course with another graduate course that focused on Popular Culture in Education. The processes used by the instructors in this collaboration are described and results of the students’ work are also presented and discussed. Background on Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling For the past several years, students and faculty members at the University of Houston College of Education have been exploring the educational uses of Digital Storytelling through a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses offered through the College of Education’s Instructional Technology Program (Robin & Pierson, 2005). In addition, a website titled The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling has been established (http://www.coe.uh.edu/digital-storytelling) that provides an introduction to Digital Storytelling, educational goals and objectives, tutorials to help users get started, evaluation materials for educators and a large number of example stories. There are numerous ways that Digital Storytelling can be used as an effective teaching and learning tool. Educators can create their own stories as a way to present new material to students, enhance and contextualize content, or facilitate discussions. Digital Storytelling can also be a potent tool for students who create their own stories. The process can capitalize on the creative talents of students as they begin to research and tell stories of their own, as they learn to use the library and the Internet to explore rich, deep content while analyzing and synthesizing a wide range of information. Students who create their own digital stories develop enhanced communications skills by learning to organize their ideas, ask questions, express opinions, and construct narratives. As they learn to create stories for an audience, the process allows them to present their ideas and knowledge in an individual and meaningful way. Ohler (2206) suggests that the process of creating a digital story helps students “tap skills and talents in art, media production, storytelling, project development…” and that “helps students become active participants rather than passive consumers in a society saturated with media.” These concepts were used as the foundation for our approach to teaching not only how to create digital stories, but also how to connect the stories to personal and educational themes that are important to each student. Combing Digital Storytelling with Popular Culture During the fall 2006 semester a graduate course on Digital Photography and Digital Storytelling was offered for the first time as half of a 6-semester hour block in conjunction with a course on Popular Culture in Education. In the popular culture course, students, many of them first year teachers, critically analyze issues and trends regarding popular culture in education and select a specific theme that they will use throughout the semester. A list of popular culture themes selected by students is shown in Table 1 below. Art The Berlin Wall Fast Food First Generation Americans Heroes John Lennon Guns and Violence Hollywood’s Portrayal of African Americans September 11 Terrorist Attack The Palestinian Conflict Marathon Running Tattoos Teen Pregnancy The American Dream Football Television Childhood Obesity Vietnam Race and Prejudice Print Media Dealing with Disease Table 1: Popular Culture Themes In the Digital Photography and Digital Storytelling course, students create and collect media (such as images, speeches, interviews, music, video clips), write scripts and design and develop digital stories based on the popular culture theme they selected and explored in the Popular Culture in Education course. The students that enrolled in one course were informed that they were required to enroll in the second course and since the two courses were held on the same day, the students could earn six hours of credit by taking the two linked courses. The Digital Storytelling Process The First Version of the Script Students are first asked to write and submit the first draft version of the script for a digital story based on their selected Popular Culture theme. Students were allowed to select topics and some chose historical events, current issues in the news or entertainment media such as film, television and music. The students were asked to include a personal element in their script so that the digital story they created would have a strong connection to something important in their own lives. Since many of the students in the courses were teachers, many of those students also integrated instructional elements in their stories tied to content they planned to use in their own classrooms. Concentrating our efforts on writing a script as the first task differed from our previous experience teaching Digital Storytelling. In the past, our emphasis had been on finding images to illustrate the story, but we found that selecting a meaningful topic and spending more time on the “storytelling” instead of the “digital,” especially early in the process, made a significant difference and gave students an opportunity to take ownership of the story through the personal nature of their writing. Daniel Meadows (2005), a leading proponent of Digital Storytelling in the UK, writes that almost half the time in a five day workshop is spent working on scripts. And his belief that time spent writing and revising a script is time well spent, proved to be true for our students as well. Example Script 1: The Challenger Explosion: Can you make a difference in this world? I remember the moment when I first realized I have something that could make a difference. It all started in the cafeteria, which also functioned as an assembly hall, when a TV was being wheeled in front of the crowd. My school, Henderson Elementary, felt it was important for us to view the first teacher ever selected for launch into space. We anticipated, we watched, and excitement mounted; and then in a split second it was gone. Throughout the cafeteria tragedy unfolded before our eyes and shock sank in. The “Challenger” shuttle had exploded during launch, lives were lost forever, and my heart was broken. This is my first recollection of feeling heartache for others and desperately wanting to help make it better. I walked home from school that afternoon trying to figure out what I could do. Later that evening, as I listened to President Regan console the nation, it hit me…I can draw! I decided I would draw a picture of the shuttle and write a letter explaining my actions for those involved in the tragedy. Then I would send it to the one person in charge of it all, the President himself. Looking back, I can see how art has influenced decisions in my life from this moment up to the present day. Although unaware, I brought reality to the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” as a small child. But I was not the first, nor would I be the last. Example Script 2: Melanoma: Schoolteacher Jessica S. was days away from getting married when a seemingly nondescript mole on her arm was diagnosed as advanced Melanoma. Just 27 years old at the time, she seemed an unlikely skin cancer patient. She had always been athletic and healthy, proud to have never having the flu. She was a marathon runner and extremely conscious of her diet. She never drank sodas, was not a sunbather, nor a tanning bed junkie. She was an athlete and a strong woman. Her days at the beach were with sun block and when playing outdoor sports with waterproof block. Yet the skin cancer was so insidious that it spread from her mole on the left fore arm to her lymph nodes in her right armpit. She went through an entire year of chemotherapy, two major surgeries, hair falling out, bed ridden for most of the year, suffers from lymphedema, and has sustained damage to her thyroid and serotonin production. Her plans to have children are still up in the air and will be kept on hold for the time being. Example Script 3: It was a far off war in a far off place that came to visit that sunny mild day in February of 1967. I was only 7, but very aware of the disparaging mood that blanketed our house at 3920 Sunnycrest Lane in Charlotte NC as the morning hours approached mid-day. Mammaw and Pampaw were visiting from Atlanta which was an exceptional treat as we usually visited them. I don’t remember why they were visiting us, but I’ll never forget the frantic call from Uncle Randy from their home in Atlanta. Uncle Randy, my strapping, strong, fearless, fun-loving, always coming and going teenaged-uncle who was driven to near hysteria by a visit from the brown, non-descript government car and two solemn members of the United States Army. They would tell him nothing and only asked for the location of his parents, my Mammaw and Pampaw. The officers left straightaway and hit I85 north which in 5 hours would take them to Charlotte and our house and Mammaw and Pampaw and my mom and dad and me and my brothers, carrying a message that no one wanted to hear…… And I remember I saw my father cry for the first time. And I remember the flag on the coffin. And I remember it’s the first time I ever saw a dead person. And I remember that Pampaw smelled funny a lot after that. And I remember things were different after that – even though I was only 7. After the initial versions of the scripts were written, students participated in small group “story circles,” in which students meet in small groups and share their ideas for their stories, read draft versions of their scripts and provide constructive criticism and suggestions that can be used to improve the scripts and the overall plan for the final stories. Describing the importance of story circles, Lambert (2007) writes: “students