Chapter 11 Reflection, The Media Production Process, Phase I: Developing the Story

In section III of Ohler’s book, he begins to explain the process of Going Digital, and starts with phase 1, the story planning phase, of his media production process. Like many others have already posted, I was reassured with the beginning of this chapter, as Ohler explained that with just a little training, every teacher could produce a reasonable digital story, (Ohler, 2008, p.132). While the digital process is important, none of it will work without the basic elements of a story, which is why phase one is so important in order for the whole project to actually work. It helped me to see the Media Production Process chart on p.134 (Figure 11.1), as it gave me the basic elements that would be covered in each phase, something I often need before I can focus on any one section. And then, Ohler gave a specific example of that chart in use with a real classroom project, Figure 11.2, which is the other thing I usually need before anything will make sense, (Ohler, 2008, p. 136). I often have a hard time really beginning a project if there are no examples of past completed projects, not because I want to copy what was done, but because I need something concrete to show me what I’m working towards. For that reason, I’m grateful that Ohler included this section in the chapter.

Ohler went on to explain the many steps in the story development process, using Figure 11.3 to depict the actual process, (Ohler, 2008, p.142). While all of the explanations were helpful for me to understand how I would actually try to create this process in my classroom, I couldn’t help but feel quite overwhelmed at the amount of work that even simple DST projects require. It’s not like I thought they were simple, but this chapter is basically only covering the very beginning of the entire process, and with my third graders, I can imagine this taking absolutely forever! That scares me! However, I know that I need to remember that everything is adapted based on the age and experience level of the students we are working with...but it’s hard to remember that when I think of my students who still struggle writing sentences!

I think I’d obviously have to adapt the story development process by giving a lot more specific instruction, either whole class, or in leveled groups. I would also most likely have to keep everything either written or oral for this first part, as including technology at this point might just destroy the project before it had a chance to even start. With work though, I can definitely see my students getting more adept at this process, and the effect it would have on their writing in general would be huge! More than anything, that is something I took from this chapter, how important the writing piece is to all of this. Since that is one of our biggest daily struggles in my class, I can definitely see how using DST to inspire them to improve their writing skills would be a very beneficial thing!