Voice for the Voiceless- Digital Storytelling

Good day to you!

This past week I have been doing a great deal of thinking on storytelling. Truthfully, in our EC & I class this week's topic had very little to do with communication technologies or social media; It was about good storytelling. For thousands of years people have been telling stories for a variety of reasons. These include a moral lesson (like a fable or a story for a religious text), entertainment (Star Wars), expression (songwriting), teach us history (The murder of Medgar Evans in Bob Dylan's "Only A Pawn In Their Game http://www.eyeneer.com/video/rock/bob-dylan/only-a-pawn-in-their-game) and many other reasons. All good storytelling has the following traits in common:
- the story has a clear message
- the story, while perhaps about a specific story, has universal meaning
- has "familiar" elements (we can relate to the story as it might be similar to a story we previously had heard
- says something in a unique way. The author is able to say something that has not quite been said like this before.

This last point is key to good storytelling. Think about it? We are surround by "stories" daily. I appreciated Alan Levine's presentation last week and I liked that he included commercials. One commercial was about a product and the benefits of that product and other one had little to do about the product, but it told the story of a shy boy getting ready for a speech. I can see why Alan selected both, but to me the more human story of the shy boy was more effective. To me, that boys story is all one we can relate to and in turn it has a deeper, almost subliminal impact. I remembering watching an interview with George Lucus in which he stated he did about a year and a half of research on "stories" while working on the original script for Star Wars. He went back and studied legends, and old stories (i.e. King Arthur, Hamlet) and based his story on archetypes (ie. the hero, the rebel, the mystic, the evil presence) from these stories. Even though the story was futuristic, he wanted the audience to feel as though they already knew these characters so they could relate to them(Long ago in a galaxy far, far away).

The concept of digital storytelling is an interesting one. As Danielle Degelman mentioned in her blog, "Children are full of stories".
http://deedegs831.wordpress.com/2014/11/11/once-upon-a-digital-story/
It has been years since I worked with little kids, so I appreciated Lisa K sharing her class blog
http://kidblog.org/MrsKowalyshynsClass/
It is true that kids have their own stories and what they say are delightful. I appreciated reading about someone's basketball team or helping grandma.

Digital Storytelling is all about expression and finding a voice. Years ago at an Apple Distinguished Educators meeting in Quebec City I worked with a group on a digital storytelling project. It started out as a photo safari, where we took pictures and then put them together to tell a story. While we were taking photos, I came across a poster for a missing child. The poster made me think about children, rights of children and forms of abuse (i.e. abduction). Our photo project than became seeing the world through a child of abuse's eyes. The project was probably one of the hardest things I had to do, but it did not start out that way. No one told us that was the subject we had to take on, but it happened on our journey and became the journey.

To me the biggest significance of digital storytelling is it empowers and gives a voice to those who sometimes do not have a voice. Many artists are not necessarily eloquent with words or do not quite fit into normal society. It is the very fact that they are often outsiders that makes them want to look for new ways to express themselves. I feel proud that I have selected doing a MOOC on Songwriting as it is a way for giving someone a voice and by studying songwriting.  I hope to not only become a better writer, but to help give the tools to my students to help give them a voice.

For my own songs, I worked closely with filmmaker Brian Ganong to create a music video for every song on my album. The videos were meant to reflect the meaning/feeling of each of the stories contained in each song and in their own way were examples of digital storytelling. Here is the video Brian made for my song, "Every Step". The song was written eight years ago while my wife was pregnant with our first child. I used to sing and read stories to my daughter Lily while she was in the womb. I had such love for someone whom I had never met and so I was moved to write this song. I feel Brian was able to capture that love and playfulness in his video. His video is really special as now Lily is almost 8 and we have another daughter, Maggie. Even though they are growing up, that special love that I have for them has grown. From feedback I have received (from parents and non-parents) they too can relate to the words of the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtIPxB0hXss

My daughter Lily as a little baby

Lily is now almost eight! Other than getting bigger, she has not really changed that much (she is still a sweet kid)!

Major Project Reflection

I thought I would take some time to reflect on my major project, which is a Song Writing MOOC I am taking through Berklee.
http://www.berklee.edu/

https://www.coursera.org/course/songwriting

https://www.coursera.org/instructor/~326

The class started about a month ago and so far I have really enjoyed it! Up until this week, it has mainly been a creative writing style course dealing mostly with lyrics. The past week and this week have started to introduce music (ie. melodies and harmonies) into the class. The reason I wanted to focus on this class was I wanted to improve my abilities as a song writer. Music has always come easily to me, but the lyrics have always been challenging. It is difficult for me express myself in words as they either come out not quite what I wanted to say or too cliché. I am very aware of this and I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to learn something not only new, but for personal enjoyment. I do teach song writing in my classes at work, but I took this class more for reasons of wanting to learn something new rather than something useful for my classroom (although so much I what I have learned does apply to the classes I teach).

In a perfect world, I would love to travel to Berklee to study. In the real world, I would need to leave my family, quit my job and grow a money tree in order for this to happen (yes, there must be money trees in my alternate real world). I would want to travel to Berklee in Massachusetts as their music school is world-class and I would love to immerse myself in their knowledge. What I love about this class is that I feel that I am getting the best of both worlds; I can live and work in my hometown and still get a quality education. This is the appeal of this MOOC and hopefully future MOOCs I might enroll in. My 85 year old grandfather, who passed away last year, for years had taken world history courses by listening to tapes of lectures. I don't know what institution he went through, but essentially it was a similar format to what I am doing. He took the classes because he was interested in the topic and was able to learn new things well into his 80's from his home. I hope to follow in his footsteps and continue my learning based on interest for years to come.

The format is the week's lessons are posted on a Monday and you have a week to work through several video lecture, mini-assignments and quizzes. At the end of the week the assignment is posted and the next set of lectures/ assignments for the next week is given. You have until Thursday (3-4 days) to complete the assignment and then you have 3 days to mark and critique a minimum 5 other classmate's work. You assign them a mark based on a set criteria and give feedback. I am still waiting to hear the feedback from the first assignment,  but so far I like the structure. Pat, the instructor, is very wise and has very good advice. I have not received a mark on my first song writing assignment, but the course has several quizzes in each week and I am scoring near 100% on all of them. If I make a mistake I can go back and re-write the quiz, but for the most part I have been scoring 100% on my first attempts. The course is set-up very logical and what I tend to do is watch the videos several times before I write the test. Like Angus said in his blog this week, I too struggle in traditional school settings. I need a great deal of repetition for something to sink in. In addition, I need a great deal of repetition for something to sink in.
http://www.angusmcintosh.ca/2014/11/how-alec-couros-katia-hildebrandt-and-friends-have-ruined-things-for-me/
On the other hand, I have enjoyed following Carmen Holota's progress on guitar as that is an area more in my comfort zone. I have shared some tips with her and hopefully they have helped her. I feel her pain as it is more difficult to pick up a new skill for me at this point in my life. I really appreciate her sticking with it as sometimes the results are not immediate and it can be discouraging.
http://mrsholota.com/video-did-not-kill-this-radio-star/

While most of the content has been areas I am familiar with, there have been some interesting aspects I never considered before. Pat talks about Aristotle's theory of Prosody. Prosody is where everything is balanced and works together in a work of art. In a song, the lyrics should be appropriate, the music should match the emotion of the lyric and the performance should deliver a convincing take. When all these elements work together then you start to have a song that is meaningful. There are several areas that create balance or imbalance, depending on what you are looking for. For example, even numbers of lines of text generally create balance while odd numbers of lines create imbalance. This is effective as either you want feeling of arrival (like the chorus of a song) or imbalance to reflect an emotion or to move the song forward from verse to verse. The content thus far has focused on:
week one: the idea of a song, your main idea and supporting ideas, balance and imbalance
week two: line length
week three: rhyme and rhythm
week four: making it move (I don't know what this means yet as it was just posted today)

I would love to be in an actual class with Pat and the other students. There is a blog and discussion area for the class, but it is not the same. This has been a challenge as you deal with isolation. I don't feel that so much in the EC & I class as I feel I know many of the students through either actually knowing them (through work or previous classes) or through their reflections. I don't know or can really relate to anyone in my MOOC. When you are creating songs it is very personal and there is something "impersonal" about some on-line classes such as mine. I am a little intimidated submitting my work as I have no idea what sort of judgements strangers will say about my work.

What works for me is playing the videos repeatedly over the course of maybe five days. I will sometimes have the lecture on while I am working on another thing or sometimes take notes as I listen. After repeated listening I go back and take the quizzes. A couple things that I find helpful is I can change the speed of the video (ex. 1.25, 1.5, 2 times as fast works great when I want to just review the video) and I usually put on the captions to see the text that he is speaking. I don't know why this helps, but it does for me.

What I hope to accomplish and eventually share with others are songs that I write. I released my debut album in the summer and I am starting writing songs for the follow-up.
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/prairie-ocean/id894684181
Last night I sat down a revisited a couple songs I have been working on for awhile, but was never happy with the lyrics. I tried applying some of the techniques Pat has taught me and already the songs are greatly improved. I hope to share these soon, but I want to try working them out a bit more. As a writer and musician I appreciate craftsmanship and that is what I strive to do (write really well-crafted pop music). This is no different than a blogger, academic or anyone who writes. We all strive for prosody! 

Great writing is usually great editing and I take my time to work on my songs, edit and get them to a point where I am happy with them. I appreciate Twitter as you have very limited characters to say something. I try not to be careless and I take my time in crafting new songs. However, there is no formula to do it. What I do know is in order for me to be creative I need to recharge and relax. As soon as there is a deadline or a pressure, my creativity usually runs dry. I have found several ways to overcome that and I will continue to do so as I work on my craft.

Here is a screenshot from my class. Here is professor Pat Pattison giving a lecture on song writing.

A question I have for others is, "Are you surprised by what you have learned so far? Has it met your expectations or has there been some aspect that has happened you never considered would happen?" For me, I am surprised by how much new material I have learned. Pat is a great teacher and he has really demystified something that always seemed out of reach for me, which is creating quality lyrics.

Looking back and running forward

I would like to quote the great educational theorist, Kenny Rogers (okay I am talking about THE Kenny Rogers, but he made an excellent point that I will apply in a different context):

Famous for his duets, Rogers talked about how he chose singing partners. “You don’t start with a partner, you start with a song—that’s what makes it work,” he said. “I’ve learned this about duets. Everybody sings better on a duet. It’s like running a hundred-yard dash. You can run it as fast as you think you can. But if you put someone faster next to you, you’re going to run faster.”

http://countrymusichalloffame.org/newsandupdates/posts/interview-kenny-rogers#.VFZTg4fEfKd

Kenny was talking about some of his most successful songs being duets. He liked doing duets as he felt working with other great artists made him sing and perform at a higher level. I heard the story of the recording of Kenny's most famous duet, "Islands in the Stream", a duet he sang with Dolly Parton and a song written for Kenny by The Bee Gees. The Bee Gees in the early 80's were ready to get rid of the massive stereotype hanging over them that they were a disco act (and by this time tastes had changed and they were not the flavour of the month anymore). The Bee Gees wanted to try new things and write for other artists in different genres. As they started the recording process for the song, things just did not seem to click. Kenny had a hard time finding the right feeling for the song and no one was happy with the results. Kenny found out that Dolly was working in the same recording studio and he asked her to come by the recording room where they were working. Kenny wanted to try it as a duet with Dolly and rest is karaoke history. 

I started my 15th year of teaching this year. For the last eight years I have had more or less the same sort of classes (a music teacher at Riffel Catholic High School in Regina). I love my job, but certainly there is a challenge of staying motivated as certain things can become routine. Trying to improve and innovate my teaching was the reason I started in the master's program three years ago. I can say without a doubt the last two months have been some of my most enjoyable of my whole teaching career. The reason for this is all of the new skills and technologies I have learned from this class from presenters, our teachers and my fellow educators taking the class with me. Everyone has been so generous with sharing their knowledge and at first I felt very intimidated. I felt like there were so many wonderful ideas being shared and I had very little to give back in return. 

Up until now, I have never really blogged, shared my learning, shared my students learning or used social media to share education knowledge. I was overwhelmed as so many in the class not only were talking about innovative new technologies, but had already been using them for a long time! I took the advice of many including +Kelly Christopherson +Jennifer Stewart-Mitchell +Lisi Wang and just dived right in. Like Kenny, I instinctively felt like I needed to get out of my comfort zone and try something new.  I know I was not alone in this feeling through our Tuesday night sessions, but it was with the encouragement of these people that really convinced me to just go for it. The following are some of the best resources I have found in the last month:

http://suewaters.com
+Sue Waters was fantastic and I was shocked that she actually commented on one of my comments in a conversation. Sue pointed me in the right direction of some blogs specific to music education and I credit her with really pushing me to discover blogging.

http://mrhicks306.edublogs.org
Here is the blog I started for my music program. The site is easy to use and I can often update it with images from the class as it is happening!

https://www.planboardapp.com
Planboard is great! I now use it to schedule my lessons, plan units and it even ties into the Saskatchewan curriculum. I shared this with my staff and now many teachers at my school are using it. I am working with an intern and she is able to share all of her lessons with me via Planboard.

https://www.coursera.org
I never knew what a MOOC was when this class started. I did a little digging and found Coursera,  which is the largest MOOC site out there. I found a great music course on song writing offered by Berekly. I enrolled and I am about halfway through the class.

https://class.coursera.org/songwriting-005
This is the class I am taking. Pat Pattison, the instructor, delivers a very interesting course. Up until now, there has been very little music discussed as it mostly deals with lyrics. At this point it is more a creative writing class, but that is okay. In the class, I watch videos of Pat's lectures, study song structure, look at examples from existing song, create my own lyrics, review and rate songs by other students in the class and have my songs critiqued.

One of the biggest challenges so far in our EC & I class is finding time. There are so many good resources out there and I need time to discover them. The resources I mentioned above were the ones I have focused on, but there are so many I would like to examine in the next month.

To summarise, it feels pretty crazy as there is so much to learn I feel like I am running in a race with my classmates. Not in a direct competitive way, but I want to contribute and get caught up. At this point I feel like I am contributing and I have had some nice comments on some of the items I have contributed. Even though there is only a month left in this class I am proud of what I have accomplished in the last month and I am looking forward to keep running forward!

P.S.
Someone, somewhere is singing their heart out to, "Islands in the Stream" right now.

Networked Identities

This was a strange week for me. Bonnie Stewart gave an excellent presentation on issues related to our digital identities. One of the most interesting aspects for me was she mentioned the dangers of identity theft/ appropriateness as a person's social media presence increases. A real life example of this was what I had to deal with this past week. Without revealing too many details, I ran a "live" discussion in my music class with the site, "Today's Meet". I was able to run a discussion in-class and virtually by having students log in on their devices. I was clear that I wanted appropriate comments and have the students sign in with their first name, but some students decided to log in with names of other students in the class. These same people then made very inappropriate comments by taking on another student's "digital identity" as posting as them. What a hassle! I spent the better part of the past week trying to track down the digital footprints of the people posting to get to the bottom of who was stealing another person's identity and posing as them.  It was discouraging to see my own students being so vulgar, but more importantly it was discouraging. Do I abandon this sort of project because of the negative actions of some?

The answer for me is no, but it illustrates some of the issues Bonnie spoke about. It boggles my mind how careless some people (especially teachers) can be with their digital identities. I have seen many examples of where a teacher posts something either maybe a little too personal or something unprofessional on their personal social media page. When they are called on their actions or some sort of discipline happens, they seem surprised like they have done nothing wrong (i.e. complaining about their principal). I know we are entering new territory, but most of what Bonnie was talking about is just common sense.

Many of the student's in our class posted valuable information on this matter. I really like the chart +Jennifer Huber used in her post (How Much Is A Child's Identity Worth). It puts the value of an identity into perspective. +Lisi Wang 's posts this week were very helpful too. +Jennifer Stewart-Mitchell always posts helpful information. These students, along with others makes me want to share better information. I appreciate that these people have clearly done a "little digging" and have found some useful academic research to support our topics. This is an area where I would like to improve.

I am hyper-aware of anything I post. I feel that anything I post is a direct reflection of me and I want to ensure I am not careless. Just this week, my wife questioned me on a post I made on my music class blog that included some pictures of students in my classes. She said, "If I was there parent, I would not appreciate someone posting pics of my kids." Fair enough comment. It was not my intention to exploit anyone, but I could see what her point was. It does not really matter if we had good intentions if we somehow "harm" someone's identity. This was a valuable lesson for me and I think the take-away for this past week is to be very aware that the internet is watching us as well as us  participating as a digital citizen.

Using Today's Meet to run a virtual conversation

And it was very good- The Maker Movement

This past week was a very interesting one for our ec&i class. Something is becoming clearer as the class moves forward is that we are directing the learning. And why not? We have over 40 professionals taking this class and there is a tremendous amount of knowledge out there from everyone. People like Kelly Christopherson, Jennifer Stewart- Mitchell, Carmen Holota, Andrew Foreman are just a few of the people that I have learned a great deal from. So many people have been generous with their talents and skills and I have in the last month discovered so many cool resources.

While not the first time I have heard of the Maker Movement, I don't have a great deal of experience with it. As I commented in Jennifer Stewart-Mitchell's post I feel in general we don't give the older kids enough opportunity to play. In early-years education is Saskatchewan there is a focus on play and exploration. At a high school level you would be hard pressed to find many areas in the curriculum document where play is explicitly documented. Many teachers might be using play at the high school level, but in my experience I would say most don't incorporate much play into their lessons? Why is this? We instinctively know we learn better when we play so why don't we allow for exploration and play in middle-years and high school (I understand this is a generalization and does not reflect most teachers taking this course)?

This week I posted a YouTube video of me demonstrating GarageBand on an iPad. I chose to do this as I had no experience with 3D printers, make-make or other tools of the maker movement. However, I use GarageBand and I felt it followed the same principles as the maker movement. I personally have you scratch and another recording program such as logic for years. In fact, my album that I released in the summer was mostly done at home using a program called logic. I have not use these programs much in my classroom because I felt hardware was an issue. I thought it would be wonderful to teaching music class with 30 laptops or 30 standalone computers and then everyone would have access to the music program. Their practical and financial issues with 30 laptops, but what about using iPads? For the last several years I have created lengthy detailed proposals for my school system to purchase these with no luck. It was because of this that I basically gave up on ever doing the project. Imagine having an industrial arts class where none of the students get to touch any of the equipment? That is more or less the reality of what I'm talking about in my music class. It's not that we don't have instruments, but without having the tool of a computer or a laptop to use in a creative way the project could not work. I was really disappointed in this, but I understood the practical problems.

Most students have smart phones and many of these smart phones have the ability to use some sort of musical program that they can use to record music. Last week as an assignment I asked the kids to come to school the next day and we would have a concert where we perform only using our smart phones. To my surprise most everyone did come the next stay with something to play even though they had no prior experience either recording or using their smart phone for making music. It was awesome to see the level of engagement that the students demonstrated. They were so enthusiastic and having fun! As a teacher, this gave me a huge boost the morale. All I want is for my students to be excited in the same way that I am about the material and I saw that finally they had arrived there.
I am looking forward to work the teacher of my lessons might take me and my classes. Today, we had an interactive the class discussion about the rest of the semester in music class using an online discussion board. I really feel that learning these new resources or incorporating the fundamentals of the maker movement have already improve my teaching.

There's An App For That

I am finally getting a chance to get caught up on all of the interesting items people have posted this week. I am doing this outside on my laptop on a beautiful fall day, with some great coffee and my kids having a blast in our back yard. . This is a reminder to me about how far we have come with access. I believe it was our first class that Alec was co-running from his phone in an airport lounge somewhere. This sort of easy access into our lives is incredible! 

There are some downsides to this integration. I can't tell you how many concerts I have been to where it seems half the people are either taking pictures with their phones or tweeting about this incredible time they are having (but are actually missing). I am guilty of this for sure in the past and I do my best to experience those moments without distraction now. A perfect example of this was a few years back I was in a touring act called, "Star Wars Live". There was a touring orchestra, but they picked up a local choir to sing in each stop and I was a ringer for the choir. Anthony Daniels, who plays C3P0, was the host and we got to meet him before the show. As he was speaking to us, there was a young lady who was texting to her friends that she could not believe she was talking to Anthony Daniels. He actually had to go over to her, asked her to put her phone away and told her, "Please try to live in the moment, dear." Burn! 

Jennifer Stewart- Mitchell recently wrote in her latest blog about the ability of technology to empower. With some pretty basic hardware (an internet connection and a smartphone) anyone can access the same information and resources our class can access. We sometimes take the privilege we have of being able to communicate via the internet for granted. We have a voice while many others around the world do not. We also assume everyone we teach in our schools have similar access and this is not the case. While Jennifer's example spoke about her class connecting with student's across the globe, there are many people in Regina who could benefit from simple access such as a smartphone and an internet connection. 

Going back to Michael's presentation, I too was a little dizzy afterwards. While it was cool to watch in real time, I was a little intimidated. Sometimes the best way to learn is rather than a complicated method of wait and I will take you through each step, Michael and the class just went for it. It did show me the potential for Google apps or other similar interactive, collaborative technology. My school system has gone to an Office 365 environment and I am still trying to get my head around that. I am coming off two full days of technology presentations at teacher's institute when all I really want to do and need time for is to play around with what is out there. From Michael's introduction to Google apps I just need some time to try those apps out and see how I can use them to deliver my classes. 

In conclusion, this is an exciting time we live in. There is so much potential and I really feel the kids are ready, but the thing holding most of us back is the attitudes of the teachers. There is fear of getting outside of our comfort zones that are stopping many of us (including me) from discovering some great ways to engage in a more meaningful way with our students. It is time we take Michael's, Jennifer's and Kelly's advice and just dive in! 

Why blog?

Hello everyone,

I have held off blogging about this week's topic as I am a newbie when it comes to blogging. It was cool to hear Sue's presentation and it seems like many in our class are already benefiting from blogging in their classrooms. I have always considered myself pretty innovative when it comes to technology, but this is one area where I feel out of my element. It is not that blogging is technically difficult, but that I struggle to find organic ways where I can incorporate blogging into my daily routine.

After giving it some thought, I realized that I already have been using "blogging" with my students. As I teach arts classes (music) I have been using journals in my classes for years. I use journals for students to reflect on an issue/ subject or two express themselves on a number of issues. As Sue said, reflection is a huge part of the learning process and I encourage it as much as possible.

I find that many students are reluctant to speak-up in class and journals give students a chance to do this. I have found often students who are the quietest have the most interesting things to say and they seem to be open to expressing themselves when they know I will be the only one reading it. Creating a class blog would be a natural extension of what I already do.

Would these shy students feel comfortable enough to express themselves freely in a blog? This is my concern as a blog is very public and once you have written something down, you also open yourself up public criticism. Would students be honest with themselves in a blog, or just post responses they think either the teacher or the class would want to hear? How authentic are people in a blog? I certainly am on guard when I post anything as I know my posts are public. What I like about journals is it gives the author a chance to be vulnerable as they know the audience. With blogging I personally feel a little guarded as I know my posts are public. Even admitting my reservations and concerns about blogging I hesitate to write as so many of my classmates seem to be prolific on blogging.

I do have some concerns about privacy and Sue mentioned this a bit in her presentation. The question was should student blogs be made public or private? While I see value in making them public, my first impulse is they should be private. At school we are very careful with children's privacy and protection from harm. I can't help but be a little hesitant as a teacher to encourage my students to post things publicly (although I know they already do this through social media). I agree that we need to educate as digital citizens and explain the various issues with authoring work that will be public. This is our world we live in and there is no denying that these skills are as important if not more important than many skills we teach in a school.

In conclusion, I am still sorting out my thoughts on blogging and how it will work in my classes. It helped me a great deal to hear Sue had similar struggles and to see how she is very effectively using blogging today.