My DST Beginning!

Digital Storytelling and All the Excitement from iLane 2

I am so happy to be a Lane Faculty Technology (ahem) Specialist at this exact point in time. Lane has fifteen or twenty years of wired world experience under its belt. We’ve got some basic systems in place, but not so many that we’ve built our own cement booties.

Image of Cement Booties ganked from oldmoldy.com
Image of Cement Booties ganked from oldmoldy.com

We’ve got the vision thing for Lane, so when we throw one of these big tech parties under the guise of a conference, new ideas pour down on fertile ground. And what with the cement booties and fertile ground, that should be enough mixed metaphors to warrant a wet spaghetti attack from my Englisher colleagues.

Quick overview: All looked normal. One hundred fifty people in the CML (da-yum those CML peeps do a good job!), a guest speaker, a panel of innovators struttin’ their stuff, lunch (oh yeah!), more speakers, lively q and a, Mark Harris wins the coveted i-Pod Touch, and we’re outta there…

Sounds so ordinaire: Hand kudos around to my pals Brad Hinson, Kevin Steeves, make smiley, go home.

So why is my head still spinning?

So why is my head still spinning?

Rewind.

Keynote speaker Brian Lamb from UBC, neighbor to the north. He’s the one. You want to know about this guy, but I don’t need to repeat what has been said elsewhere. Check his affidavits out at the i-Lane Blog or at his own blog called Abject Learning: edu-geek, edu-punk, edu-blogger, “thought-leader in the areas of open courseware, online education, new media, digital storytelling, and overall teaching outside the box”; what’s not to like? I’ll add smart, funny, clear moral compass, and full of great ideas and resources for the likes o’ me.

Our theme was “digital literacy.”

I used to think I was quite digitally literate; now, not so much!

Brian gave me a great model of what digital literacy looks like and lots of tools for getting there. Here is a link to the wiki he set up for Lane with loads of links to classroom-friendly Web 2.0 resources.

Obviously, I am an edu-blogger myself, and I plan on putting all my WR 121 students on blogs in about two weeks. I’ve done it before, but I have lots of questions about how to create cutting edge assignments that are “out of the box” but still meet students where they are. Brian Lamb showed me I don’t need to reinvent this particular wheel. There’s no shortage of Web 2.o tools to intellectually and creatively engage both me and my students.

"Excuse me, I'm texting"
“Excuse me, I’m texting”

For example, Lamb pointed us to Alan Levine’s 50+ Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story. I immediately started to play with the first one that caught my eye, 5 Card Flickr.

I am so excited about digital storytelling that I am beside myself. I feel that a whole new world is opening up for me.

“You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. but mostly they’re darked.
But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?”
Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

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