Leadership Digital Story

What does it mean to be a Leader?

Who comes to mind when you think of the word leader?

• Presidents
• Heads of state
• C.E.O.'s
• Dictators
• Elders

What qualities do these leaders possess that inspire you and how does that affect what kind of leader you are?

• Banevolent
• Inspiring
• Honest
• Respected
• Intelligent

Join me on my journey to discover what kind of leader I aspire to be by watching "Being a Leader" posted on Teacher Tube. The video was developed using the visual portrait of a story (VPS) below:


















Assignment:
This project is one that I designed for a Leadership class but it could easily be adapted for any social studies curriculum. The learning goal I have for students is for them to reflect in a digital story, on what they think a good leader is, provide some examples of leaders that inspire them and use that to uncover what leadership qualities are most important in their own lives.

Students, create your own story answering the questions:

• What does it mean to be a leader?
• What kind of leader am I?

Your digital story will be assessed with the rubric below.

Assessment Rubric:

Point of View & Audience Awareness

Strong awareness of audience in the design. Students can clearly explain why they felt the vocabulary, audio and graphics chosen fit the target audience.

5 4 3 2 1

Duration of Presentation

Movie was no shorter than 3 minutes and no longer than 4 minutes.

5 4 3 2 1

Images

Images create a distinct atmosphere or tone that matches different parts of the story. The images may communicate symbolism and/or metaphors.

5 4 3 2 1

Voice Pacing

The pace (rhythm and voice punctuation) fits the story line and helps the audience really "get into" the story. Narrator does not speak too fast or too slowly for the story line.

5 4 3 2 1

Credits

All non-original sources including images, video, music and print references are cited at the end of the movie.

5 4 3 2 1

Reflection:
After completing this project myself, I found that it really helped me understand what leadership means to me and how I put my leadership skills into daily practice. I would like students to have this same experience and share it with their peers to help them understand what kind of leaders they aspire to be. Since there is no real "right" answer to "What does it mean to be a leader?" students can have the freedom to explore their own convictions and ideas and customize their answer to fit them individually within the format of a Digital Story.

I personally found the visual portrait of a story (VPS) hard to draft since my story wasn't your typical fictional tale or even documentary. When working with students I would spend some time before production discussing leadership and having them free-write about what they think leadership means and what leaders have inspired them before moving on to a storyboard. Having students complete a storyboard before production I have found keeps them more focused and helps them stick with a storyline that flows easily from one part to the next.

In regards to the production of my digital story I did not have a clear vision about how the story would develop or what I would use for images until I did some preliminary searching on the web about Leaders and Leadership. I think this is part of the reason why I had such trouble drafting a VPS. In the end, I feel this was a fun and personally insightful process for me and I look forward to making more digital stories in the future.

My Educational Philosophy

My Educational Philosophy Movie:
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=658ddbbb3c1cae93603e

What obstacles did you encounter in producing your media piece?
I was faced with a few technical obstacles in producing my teaching philosophy video. Most of them were quirks in Windows Movie Maker some of which I was able to resolve, others that I still do not understand. I had to recreate my whole piece twice because after saving, closing and re-opening my project I would find that all my pictures wouldn’t show up.

How did I overcome this?
I discovered that this was because I had scanned them and saved them on a flash drive and started making my project using those images but then later decided to save my images, along with all my other media like music and voice over narration to a folder entitled Ed Philosophy. Once I had all my media saved in the same folder and inserted them from Windows Movie Maker into my project they saved correctly.
I also had an issue with a setting in Windows Media Player that showed all my pictures in psychedelic bright colors. I’m sure it has something to do with some setting I have in WMP but I have been unable to figure it out through the help menus.

What did I learn in the process?
After this project I’ve had experience using both iMovie & Windows Movie Maker with varying results. I would have to say I prefer iMovie, it is much more user friendly with little outside technical expertise needed. I struggled to get Movie Maker to do what I wanted it to and found the help menu to be less than helpful but because I am in a PC-only district I made a strong effort to overcome my obstacles and learn some of the basics so I can use Movie Maker in the classroom. Completing a project like this with high school students would take some advanced planning and careful time management and practice adding different media to the project.

How will I use a project like this with my own students?
A simple media project I would like to attempt with my high school students in my Leadership class is to guide them in creating a 1 minute video describing what kind of leader they see themselves as, using only digital pictures and maybe some music. I’d like to start small and simple with my first project with students because I know now how frustrated I got with my first time using Movie Maker & I want to show them one feature at a time and guide them in putting together their movie over the course of 2 weeks or so. I believe starting small will build my confidence with using digital video in the classroom and provide my students with the experience of creating a digital media piece that they can use later for jobs or college admission.

Picture Story

Ma’s Berry Patch

When I bought my first house one of my favorite things I liked about the place was that it had its own berry patch.

Growing up my mother always took us berry picking every summer. We’d save our old ice cream buckets, pack a lunch in the old Coleman cooler, and set out down an old dirt road in search of the berry patch. Half-way there someone would inconveniently remember that we had forgotten the almighty bug dope, but no one would care because we got to pick and eat berries in the sunshine all day, right? After what seemed like an eternity of dusty, windy dirt road ma would proclaim “Now I bet there’s berries in that spot” and we’d stumble over each other, racing to the berry patch only to discover that there were indeed plenty of berries but we’d forgotten our buckets back at the truck. Not to worry though, looking back towards the truck we could see mom would be halfway to our spot carrying all the buckets. These were some of my fondest memories of my childhood; spending sunny days outside with my mom picking berries.

Now that I have two of my own children one of their favorite things to do is make a picnic outside in the lawn by the berry patch. On sunny days in July when the strawberries glisten in the sunlight and start to ripen we make a daily pilgrimage out to the berry patch with our berry bowl to see how many are fat and red and ready to eat. We sit in the sun on a blanket, pick berries and the kids fight over the biggest berries to eat. When all the berries are picked and eaten we play outside until dad comes home and try to find a few unpicked berries to share with him. We’re a happy family in ma’s berry patch.

Futuring Reflection

A. How would you “grade” or assess Fox Becomes a Better Person, and School Train?

In assessing "Fox Becomes a Better Person" I would assess Hannah’s:

• Traditional Storytelling techniques
  o Use of body language
  o Memorization of the story
  o Skill at performing in front of a live audience
  o Using drawings to contribute to the story.

If I were to assess the "School Train" video for a Language Arts class I would do so on the following criteria:

• # of metaphors illustrated through
  § images
  § graphics
  § text
  
  
• The flow of the video:
  § Did it make sense?
  § Do I have a better understanding of how a School is like a Train after watching it?
  
  In assessing "School Train" for the technology and video editing skills I would assess student’s:
• Skill using stop animation.
• Skill using special effects and how well they contributed to the flow and objective of demonstrating how a school is like a train.
  
  
  B. What impacts could the developments portrayed in "epic 2015" have on your classroom, particularly with respect to things like pod casting?
  
• According to Epic 2015 the future holds for our students of today a “Living, Breathing, Media-Scape” in which anyone can publish anything on the internet. In regards to the implications of pod casting on the classroom of the future I think it could be:
  
  The Good:
  a. Integrated educational use of iPods and like devices in the classroom, which leads to varying methods of both teaching and learning and an increase to the growing body of knowledge and personal connectivity worldwide.
  The Bad:
  b. Educators banning the use of handheld devices in the classroom because of disruptions to lectures and other classroom activities. The world’s growing body of knowledge and connectivity slows because of little or no contributions from the world of academia.
  And The Ugly:
  c. IN response to the banning of hand held devices in classrooms students’ skill at concealing the use of such devices in classrooms increases, which leads to rise in cheating, bullying, harassment and disciplinary actions.
  
• O.K. I’m going to totally credit my husband, (who has made me watch way too many westerns lately), with the Clint Eastwood reference I’ve come up with here, but you get the point. As educators and more importantly educational policy makers, we must come to the collective realization that hand held devices are not going away and embrace how we can use them to our advantage in the classroom. Most of our students are already publishing their own content about their lives on YouTube, FaceBook and MySpace and with the growing popularity of these services it is obvious we can’t ignore it or block these at school forever. Teaching responsible use and internet safety alongside online publishing in schools should be a given if it is to be successful and safe for our students.
  
  
  C. How might you use Sabrina Journey as a model for something you would do with your own students?
  
• In my experience with teaching teens, anytime you let them incorporate their own personalities, styles and their own life experiences into an assignment the more they get hooked into whatever you are trying to teach. I’m thinking of using this as my first digital story assignment for my Leadership class to tackle because it would require students to research a topic they have no problem getting excited about, themselves!!
  
  
  Creating a digital story based on a student’s life would be a highly motivated project for student’s to explore:

1. Using digital video editing special effects.

2. Practice using the digital story format.

3.Their own lives including:

• Where have I been?
• Why am I here?
• What does the future hold?

My Biography

I am the Library Media Specialist at Houston High School in the Mat-Su Valley. I've taught in the Mat-Su Borough School District for 6 years, 5 of them at HHS. Before that I taught at Wasilla Middle School for 1 year as a Social Studies and Language Arts teacher. In addition to my library licensure I'm also certified grades 5-12 in Social Studies. I am originally from small town Northern Minnesota and moved to Alaska shortly after graduating from The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, MN.

In addition to being the school librarian I also advise Student Government at my school and this year I am teaching a Leadership course to 10 class officers in grades 10-12. Our student body president helped get our school's closed circuit T.V. system operational last year and students began doing weekly video broadcasts from the library. I'm eager to start incorporating digital storytelling into my Leadership class and getting students to create their own digital stories for broadcast in our school.

I started working on my master's in Educational Technology in the summer of 2007 through UAS and first learned about Digital Storytelling in a course I took in June in which we had to create some digital stories.

On a personal note I have 2 children, Erik who is almost 2 and Aurora who just started Kindergarten this week and I just got married this past summer in July.