In this week's class, we held our first round of story circles in which students met in small groups to discuss the scripts they are writing for the final semester digital story project.
Post a comment here in which you discuss some of the feedback and ideas that came out of the story circle experience. In your posting, talk briefly about whether or not you think this will affect the next version of your script that you will be submitting next week and if so, how and if not, why not.
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26 comments:
I found the small group discussion and the emphasis Dr. Robin placed on the personal connection very helpful.
I decided to focus only on what inspired me to choose the topic of cell phones to begin with, renewing my family cell phone plan and all the decisions and research that went into that decision.
The focus will be on the various uses of the cell phone, the convenience of the desire to individualize cell phones, and a parent's concern for the safe use of the cell phone.
Keyana Jackson
This experience has inspired me to make a personal connection to the topic of Hip Hop fashion. The way I wear my hair, dress, and several other things are influenced by this culture. Hip Hop also influences my students so I think it is a great popular culture topic.
The class discussion really helped me get a better grasp of what shape and form I wanted my lesson to take. It also helped bring out some of the subtle points I need to think about in terms of clarify of idea and making sure what I have in mind is being expressed clearly in my script. Just being able to bounce my thoughts and ideas off of different people and get immediate feedback really helped out. I’m also getting the impression that my idea of making the Digital Media Lesson “personal” is going to be different and I’m curious to see how effective it will be in the end.
The story circle really helped me with my script. Talking to others and seeing their examples helped me get a better idea of what I could do. It also helped that Dr. White joined our group for a bit and your assistants did as well. I was very worried becuase I want to make a photo story that can be used to "double dip" in both classes (yours and Dr. White's). My pop culture topic is fashion. I have no interest in fashion and therfore, was having a very hard time figuring out how I was going to make my story personal and educational. After I mentioned that I was not interested in fashion and found the idea of speding big money on beauty and clothes to be kind of dumb, members of my story circle suggested that I pose my position/opinions about fashion in my photostory and take the story from there. This was actually a great idea, that now seems so "common sense." Dr. White also mentioned that by doing this, my photostory could be used to teach critical thinking, debate, decision making, etc., all of which are TEKS.
It's very obvious that the story circle REALLY helped me. This seems to be a very helful strategy in my opinion.
I found the story circle very useful for the revision on the script. It was good to hear where other people were heading with their ideas and to get some feedback on mine. I think the general consensus was that my script may be a little on the lengthy side so I have decided to give it a read through and time it prior to editing to get the idea where to strip things out if needed.
Anne made some excellent suggestions and I will be taking on board a good proportion of her advice.
I have to say that this is probably the first digital story that I have done right from basic idea through to final product and I am quite looking forward to seeing how it turns out :)
Like everyone else, I found the story circles to be very helpful.
I was not very pleased with the first draft of my script. I felt like it was an incomplete (and superficial) thought, and I was glad for input from my peers and Dr. Robin.
I will still be focusing on advertising, but after our mutual discussions on concepts such as entitlement and "fast food" cultures, I was able to narrow the scope of my script. The image of Toys-R-Us commercials (from when I was a child) have been in my mind since I began working on this topic, so my spin will be that modern advertising has created everlasting kids...
We'll see how that goes. (At least the second draft is already better than my first)
Maggie
I like the idea of modern advertising, how it plays into the feeling of entitlement, and the everlasting kid.
I look forward to seeing your digital story.
Dr. Robin has given very helpful comments on my script on the theme 'Advertising on children'. I mentioned children's cartoon characters, consumerism, channels of advertising in my first draft. It seemed I threw in too many things while I should focus on one or two well-connected things in a 5-minute story. He also suggested some new ideas in case I want to choose another topic.
In fact, I have collected images and have developed a script, so I would like to continue with what I'm doing. I know I need to 'streamline' the idea and revise the script. Perhaps I will focus on the cartoon icons only. I also have to do more research to find solutions for the problem of advertising's negative effects on children.
The story circle helped me by allowing me to talk through some ideas that I had been struggling with. I was able to see that I needed to drop certain aspects of my script and that I needed to place more emphasis on how the media is one of the major culprits affecting our society's twisted view of what a "hero" is.
The small group discussion was very helpful for me as well. Last week, I had been flip-flopping back and forth between two ideas. The feedback I recieved on the two ideas helped me decide which topic I should cover. I am going to focus my story on H J Heinz (and the World's Fair). My group thought that the topic was unique and interesting. I am still able to incorporate some of the concepts of my popular culture topic (advertising) into the mix of the story. For now, I am working on the story - and making it relevant. But my group was VERY helpful in helping me decide which story idea I should proceed with.
Splitting up into groups for our last class was real helpful. It was also interesting to see what everyone else was thinking of doing. I think I am going to go along with my symbols idea and have emailed my script to Dr. Robin. Let's see if I get the okay. Hope everyone is having a great weekend.
The story circle helped me to better understand what ideas were important to me. Hal and Rene had developed their ideas thoroughly, and it was interesting to hear their thought processes. My script has changed, and I think it has become more cohesive. The issue with my first draft was that it seemed open ended and fragmented. I think Anne’s advice was the greatest help to me. Anne made me realize the need to balance facts with the personal narrative.
Although I knew that my original script would require a scaling down before our story circles, the activity made me realize just how much pruning I would need to do.
I have a nasty habit of always wnating to know the "whole story," so my first script included a lot of background information that ended up cluttering the deeper meaning that I was trying to convey. While I'm not convinced that my second draft is sufficiently concise either, I think that it does represent a significant imporvement over the first.
The group discussion was helpful to me because I was given some tips on which way to go with my scipt. Dr. Robin was very helpful and hearing my group member's ideas helped me to get a better understanding of what I wanted to focus on.
The theme for my group is Food so I decided to go with a sub-theme of fast food. Of course this is a broad topic so with my script I chose to go with the cost of fast food. Dr. Robin kind of led me to this decision because he thought it would be a good idea to see how much someone spent on fast food. I guess we'll see how this turns out.
I really enjoyed the way we got to tell about what we were each working on and gave each other suggestions and recommendations on how and what to do. It gave us all the opportunity to share ideas.
I am working on a separate digital story for this class as the one that I created for Dr. White's class was less informal. This one is more complicated and has a larger amount of photos. It will be a challenge to create one for five to six minutes in length.
This was fun and good use of time. Thanks to those in my group who gave constructive feedback and ideas.
The small groups gave me more information over my topic. I will definitely focus on Conjunto music. I alos gave information to other people in my group. Their ideas were very interested and I am curious as to how their final project will look.
My group was interested in my topic, but I realized I did my story all wrong because it was very choppy, with lots of facts, and very little personalization to it.
So, within discussing what I had tried to do, my group agreed that it may be more appropriate to find how steroids may have personally affected my life.
I love the Olympics and the athletes who have competed in them have had chronicled use of performance enhancing substances since they first began. So when Marion Jones made her announcement last month, my group thought it would be more appropriate to focus on what I thought about her admission and whether that has changed my obsession with the Olympics.
I got a lot of feedback from Dr. Robin about what direction I should take my story. Of course, there were many options and its my job now to narrow down what my story is actually going to focus on. The hardest part for me was the actual introduction and beginning of the script. It is so important that I get it right so that it can lead me in the right direction as far as where the story is going. I'm glad I got some feedback and direction, but I think I have a long way to go still.
I found the round table discussion and Dr.Robin's advice were very useful.
I delve into something that was considered as different in western and eastern culture. For example, a dragon is commonly described as a greedy animal in western culture. Yet, in eastern culture, it is considered as a holy animal. I am lucky enough to read books that related to this topic.
Although I did not have a concrete plan for the final project, I am getting closer to create what I want to do for the final project.
Thank you for the advice. Dr.ROBIN
The story circle amde me realize that I needed to rethink my project all together. It wasn't personal, it was just about goods and consumers. In order to make it more personal I added my own struggles with wanting everything new that comes out and what I could be doing different with that money.
I was not here the day of the story circles because I had to be downtown for a conference that my principal sent me to.
The draft that I wrote is not very personal to me. I sort of have done that for a reason. I teach 2nd grade and I plan to use the story in my class since I am going to spend a bazillion hours on it. I plan to make mine in 2nd person so that my students can be the ones to make a personal connection. We know that if the lesson is meaningful and value-based that the students will get more out of it. Since my topic is needs and wants I think it is important to make it personal to the kids - they could care less what I need or want, they need and want everything!
Through the small group discussion of story circles, I was suggested to focus on Walmart fashion and coutour fashion, which was a great idea. I was still having trouble trying to personalize this photostory...How would I make this theme personal to me? I was planning on changing the topic of my photostory and making it perosnal by writing about my journey to the United States. However, I wanted to double-dip so I will stick with the "fashion" story.
I found the small group to be very helpful. I entered the group with lots of ideas but no way to connect the ideas. Anne suggested that I tell my story about how I came to be in Houston and include that in my discussion of the art that came from Katrina.
I also verified that I did not need to do my final assignment on advertising. Which I was struggling with because I wanted to make a story that was meaningful to me.
In the small group discussion I was advised that I should try and try to include a more personal story. When I rewrote my script I tried to make a more personal connection with the audience. I'm not exactly how successful I was with it, but I feel that is a better script.
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