Chapter five in Ohler’s book contained a wealth of
information about how to start thinking like a storyteller. All of the
information provided about good traits in stories, the guidelines for a story
core, and the uses for storyboarding and story mapping, are necessary when
beginning to delve into the world of digital storytelling. I appreciated all of
the background knowledge about the story core, especially about the explanation
of the problem/solution part being something like the new you/old you (Ohler,
2008, p. 73). Trying to get that very basic part of a story to be understood by
young children is very difficult, and some of the examples provided by Ohler
could definitely help when working with children just beginning their journey
of storytelling.
The other part of the chapter that really stood out
to me as valuable for teachers was the section on story mapping. As I was
reading it, I kept thinking that there was going to be some grand and elaborate
new way of teaching that Ohler would end up explaining. I thought that maybe his
depiction of story mapping was somehow going to be very different from the way
teachers everywhere have to teach it every day. However, I found that there
really wasn’t any fantastic epiphany, and that although his examples of story
mapping weren’t exactly the same as what I teach in third grade, they truly
were very similar. This made me feel very good! Teaching third graders to write
stories when they are still struggling with writing basic sentences, paragraphs,
etc. can be quite challenging. Using story maps though has always been a way
that we try to get them to understand the parts of a story, what the problem
is, how important the characters are, etc. It’s not really something that is
stressed in most of the curriculums I’ve used, but is something that I’ve had
to teach nonetheless, because my students needed that background knowledge to
be able to begin their writing. And it was very nice to read that what we have
been doing was something that has actually been proven to work!
I felt that all of the information in this chapter was
very useful as it reminded me about the values of using story mapping in my
classroom, and why it can truly help the kids we are teaching. Over the years, I
think I have lessened my use of story maps due to lack of time for what was
actually part of the curriculum, but now remember why they were so important in
the first place. I saw again by Ohler’s explanations of the story elements how
kids can benefit when they are explicitly taught these specific skills. And I
also found that I absolutely understood and agreed with Ohler’s clarification
about why he discourages students to use computers when creating story maps
(Ohler, 2008, p. 80). Obviously with kids who are still learning to write, it
is hard enough just to get their thoughts on paper, let alone trying to get
them on a computer. But truly, even for older kids and adults, having the
ability to just sketch things out, using pictures or words, is definitely an
invaluable tool. It really does save time later on, and not having the hindrance
of trying to make things perfect on the computer is so helpful as well. Any of
us who struggled with the creation of concepts maps using computers would definitely
understand that sentiment very well!
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