Welcome to the SHU blog of ELI 2008!

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Doing my homework- Starting with the God

Sorry folks for not getting into this earlier - combination of time, Texas trots (don't ask) 2 hours sleep a night and not bringing my own laptop with me (never again).
Anyway will try to give you a quick overview of what I've been to so far - and what an inspiring event it really is.
Start with the best and on Monday I worshiped at the feet of the God that is Bryan Alexander (GBA). Despite the aforementioned afflictions GBA tried valiantly to engage me in Web 2.0 Storytelling and soon I was under the spell. So, if you're sitting comfortably, I will begin.
We did a rapid trot through the history of storytelling from the oral to web 1 (culturally normative) to web 2.0 (culturally reflective). GBA reviewed the many platforms being used for digital stories , blogs, wikis, social slides, serial photo stories, podcasting etc and the trend for stories to start in one platform but be continued across others depending on the needs and preferences of the contributor.
Some DF issues touched on in the discussion - the need to help students develop more sophisticated visual literacies/the idea of the conflict between authority and community and wether in order to encourage participation we need to give up (initially at least) the notion of excellence.
GBA then covered the principles of Digital story telling - drawing on the Digital Storytelling Cookbook (someone else pinching our recipe idea) - but then I lost the plot completely when he started talking about the need to 'Fab your Lexia Chunks' - I didn't even know I had any lexia chunks let alone that I could 'fab' them - but then sheltered upbringing and all that.
The abiding message based on the enthusiasm and level of engagement in the activities in the session was that DS if fun, playful and a powerful learning agent - not unlike GBA.

4 comments:

Kay said...

btw - more to come later but ran out of time despite a 6 am start.

smodge said...

oh god, now you're a pair of GBA groupies - we'll get you some t shirts made up.

Hope the rest of the week settles down for you! (and the TTs go away)

gs said...

hope you're feeling better soon - maybe one last conversation with gba will cure you of your ills (he's clever like that, you know). and if that doesn't work, you could always try fabbing your lexia chunks :)

Andrew Middleton said...

A lot of this is online in GBA's wiki with (dare I say it?) some really good Powerpoints:
http://apps.nitle.org/wikifarm/research/index.php/Web2/0Storytelling