Video Project #2 "Challenger: My Coming of Age Experience"

Chapter 13 Reflection "The Digital Storytelling Toolbox: The Tools Teachers and Students Need to Tell Digital Stories"

Where was Ohler in 2007 when I started teaching my first media class?  I could have used every word of advice in chapter 13 of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom.  The lesson that stings the most, “Don’t by on the leading edge.” (Location 2208)  After tinkering with a product called Adobe Visual Communicator I convince my principal to purchase a class set of the software.  Visual Communicator seemed like the perfect solution to create well voiced digital stories, a daily news broadcast, and a slew of other engaging projects.  The software even had other teachers using it in their classrooms, and some were willing to mentor newbies like myself.  It was all so promising.  Then the glitches started, followed by system crashes—one step forward and three steps back became the motto of my media classroom.  My students learned how to work around bugs in the software instead of focusing on how to tell stories well.   Adobe was in the dark on how to help, being that the product had been acquired from another company.  To this day they still sale the software program and to this day people can still be found on Adobe’s forum begging for help or SCREAMING about the lack of support.  In the end, I feel that the software disrupted learning, sunk my credibility as a technology teacher with my peers, and cost me hundreds of hours of wasted time.  By the time I knew we had a problem, I should have started having my students just use what we had for free.  In time Microsoft Movie Maker and Photo Story, both free programs for Window's users, ended up being the backbone of  the class.

Ohler, J. (2008). Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy,

                Learning, and Creativity [Kindle DX version].   Retrieved from Amazon.com