Chapter 3 Reflection, Digital Storytelling as an Educational Tool: Standards, Planning, and Literacy

I found chapter three in Ohler’s book to be one that would probably be most useful for teachers running up against challenges in trying to start using more digital storytelling in their classrooms. Unfortunately, because it is a newer skill and as Ohler explained on page 41, there has been little research conducted on the importance of DST, resistance is something that many teachers will absolutely face. Like I mentioned in the last chapter, trying to convince an administrator that DST is worthy of your time, would also not be possible if we didn’t have the standards and other planning tools already worked out to present as our evidence for the overall value. I appreciated the fact that Ohler addressed specific technology standards in this chapter, and felt that the way they were linked to traditional language arts standards was very helpful. As teachers, we know how important all of the language arts skills are, and by mixing those with the native technology language our students already speak, we actually might have a better chance of reaching more kids in more ways.

I definitely agreed with what Ohler wrote about the DAOW, the digital, art, oral, and writing acronym. My first thought was how important the writing piece was in that group, since that is something my third graders struggle with tremendously. Then my next thought was how the oral piece would be so helpful for some of my struggling writers, who have an easier time explaining their thoughts out loud rather than in written form. Having that ability to speak their written words could help give those kids so much more confidence. From there, I jumped to the art piece and how my students would be so thrilled to be able to add more artistic pieces into their work, since we have had to cut back on that tremendously due to testing demands. And then finally, I thought about how cool it would be to be able to actually use the digital technology to entice all of my kids with something new and exciting (besides the boring drill and kill work we seem to be doing on a daily basis). Honestly, all of those four literacy skills are equally important and truly necessary if we want to incorporate DST into our classrooms, and I do have a renewed sense of excitement at how beneficial this could be for my students.