Beyond Digital Stories: 49 Crafting Digital … · page 49 Voices from the Middle, Volume 23 Number...

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page 49 Voices from the Middle, Volume 23 Number 2, December 2015 Stephen Adam Crawley Beyond Digital Stories: Crafting Digital Compositions for Opinion Writing A few years ago, I enrolled in a graduate level digital storytell- ing course. Writing instruction and technology integration had long been passions of mine, so I looked forward to learning how these two fields could merge to create processes and products represen- tative of twenty-first-century technologies and skills for my students. As the course progressed, my graduate classmates and I crafted our own individual digital narratives, sharing stories from our lives. We also learned about the theory and relevance of digital story- telling in K–12 classrooms. I became increasingly inspired and wondered how I might incorporate what I was learning about digital storytelling into my fifth-grade classroom. I taught fifth grade in a school located in a rural area near a large university in the south- eastern United States. Nearly 600 students were enrolled in K–5 in our school, and I served 100 students as the writing teacher in our fifth-grade team. While predominantly white, the students represented a diversity of socioeconomic back- grounds and learning abilities. They also had various expertise and experience with technology inside and outside of school. It had reached the point in the school year where my students needed to work on the opin- ion writing genre. The Common Core State Standards [CCSS] use the term “opinion” in fifth grade, which transitions to “argument” in sixth grade and beyond (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Coun- cil of Chief State School Officers, 2010, W.5.1; W.6.1). The first half of the school year had been devoted to writing narrative and informational pieces, and the state writing assessment was fast approaching. Both the writing assessment and the CCSS require students be proficient in nar- rative, informational, and opinion genres. Realiz- ing that multimodal storytelling allows students to draw on their knowledge, experiences, and passions in order to tell new stories and become more deeply engaged in the academic content of school (Ohler, 2008; Vasudevan, Schultz, & Bateman, 2010), I believed that creating digital compositions for opinion writing could become a powerful and engaging tool for my students’ writing as we entered into this new genre study. As I planned ahead, the following three ques- tions guided my design of the opinion writing unit: 1) How could students craft opinion pieces via a digital composition? 2) How could digital compositions strengthen students’ arguments and create added layers of meaning to the stu- dents’ words? 3) How would the students’ digital compositions be similar to, and different from, the digital stories I learned about in my graduate course? While the first two questions will be ad- dressed further in this article, it may be appro- priate to address the final question now. Digital storytelling represents a form of multimodality and has become a term associated with the cre- ation of digital pieces that include written text, images (e.g., photographs or illustrations), mu- sic, ambient sound effects, and/or voice narration to convey a story (Lambert, 2010). Each of these separate components work together to establish meaning and form a cohesive whole. However,

Transcript of Beyond Digital Stories: 49 Crafting Digital … · page 49 Voices from the Middle, Volume 23 Number...

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Voices from the Middle, Volume 23 Number 2, December 2015

Crawley | Beyond Digital Stories: Crafting Digital Compositions for Opinion WritingStephen Adam Crawley

Beyond Digital Stories: Crafting Digital Compositions

for Opinion Writing

A few years ago, I enrolled in a graduate level digital storytell-ing course. Writing instruction

and technology integration had long been passions of mine, so I looked forward to learning how these two fields could merge to create processes and products represen-tative of twenty-first-century technologies and skills for my students.

As the course progressed, my graduate classmates and I crafted our own individual digital narratives, sharing stories from our lives. We also learned about the theory and relevance of digital story-telling in K–12 classrooms. I became increasingly inspired and wondered how I might incorporate what I was learning about digital storytelling into my fifth-grade classroom.

I taught fifth grade in a school located in a rural area near a large university in the south-eastern United States. Nearly 600 students were enrolled in K–5 in our school, and I served 100 students as the writing teacher in our fifth-grade team. While predominantly white, the students represented a diversity of socioeconomic back-grounds and learning abilities. They also had various expertise and experience with technology inside and outside of school.

It had reached the point in the school year where my students needed to work on the opin-ion writing genre. The Common Core State Standards [CCSS] use the term “opinion” in fifth grade, which transitions to “argument” in sixth grade and beyond (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Coun-

cil of Chief State School Officers, 2010, W.5.1; W.6.1). The first half of the school year had been devoted to writing narrative and informational pieces, and the state writing assessment was fast approaching. Both the writing assessment and the CCSS require students be proficient in nar-rative, informational, and opinion genres. Realiz-ing that multimodal storytelling allows students to draw on their knowledge, experiences, and passions in order to tell new stories and become more deeply engaged in the academic content of school (Ohler, 2008; Vasudevan, Schultz, & Bateman, 2010), I believed that creating digital compositions for opinion writing could become a powerful and engaging tool for my students’ writing as we entered into this new genre study. As I planned ahead, the following three ques-tions guided my design of the opinion writing unit: 1) How could students craft opinion pieces via a digital composition? 2) How could digital compositions strengthen students’ arguments and create added layers of meaning to the stu-dents’ words? 3) How would the students’ digital compositions be similar to, and different from, the digital stories I learned about in my graduate course?

While the first two questions will be ad-dressed further in this article, it may be appro-priate to address the final question now. Digital storytelling represents a form of multimodality and has become a term associated with the cre-ation of digital pieces that include written text, images (e.g., photographs or illustrations), mu-sic, ambient sound effects, and/or voice narration to convey a story (Lambert, 2010). Each of these separate components work together to establish meaning and form a cohesive whole. However,

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Copyright © 2015 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

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The term “digital story”

often encompasses any

digital, multimodal piece

regardless of genre.

one of the key aspects of digital storytelling is its emphasis on story. This is a distinction that is sometimes overlooked and the term “digital sto-

ry” often encompasses any digital, multimodal piece regardless of genre. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to my students’ projects as digital composi-tions because of their em-phasis on opinion writing as

opposed to a chronological narrative. The remainder of this article will describe

how my students and I traversed the terrain from developing traditional opinion essays to the con-struction of digital compositions and how various writing crafts were incorporated throughout the process to strengthen each students’ argument and influence their readers.

Why Digital Compositions Are Platforms for Opinion WritingIn addition to the CCSS requiring that fifth-grade students compose opinion pieces on topics or texts and support a point of view with rea-sons, the standards also call for students to uti-lize technology to produce and publish writing (NGA & CCSO, 2010, W.5.2; W.5.6). Vasude-van, Schultz, and Bateman (2010) state, “Despite a proliferation of opportunities for multimodal composing outside of school, all too frequent-

ly youth only read and compose paper-based printed texts inside of school” (p. 446). Students need to be provided opportunities to create us-ing twenty-first-century tools often available at their fingertips in schools and the world at large in order to connect their in-school learning to their out-of-school realities, but all too often, teachers resort to traditional paper-and-pencil approaches rather than tapping these resources. Perhaps this is due to a lack of familiarity with twenty-first-century technologies on our part as instructors, concerns regarding a lack of time or resources, or an internalized manner in which we define and practice literacy through our own past experiences. Multimodality reflects the shifts in twenty-first-century young adolescents’ lived experiences and supports a wide array of modes and media essential to students’ literate futures (Siegel, 2006). Jason Ohler (2009) furthers these assertions:

Being literate in a real-world sense means being able to read and write using the media forms of the day, whatever they may be. For centuries, consuming and producing words through reading and writing and, to a lesser extent, listening and speaking were suf-ficient. But because of inexpensive, easy-to-use, and widely available new tools, literacy now requires be-ing conversant with new forms of media as well as text, including sound, graphics, and moving images. In addition, it demands the ability to integrate these new media forms into a single narrative, or “media collage,” such as a Web page, blog, or digital story (p. 30).

ConneCtions from readwritethink

Teenagers are often outspoken and opinionated. Writing reviews of the literature they read gives them a chance to express their ideas while developing style and voice. This lesson uses discussion of student opinions about yesterday’s lunch or a popular TV show as an introduction to the genre of reviews. Students then read and analyze conflicting re-views. After examining samples of movie, music, restaurant, and book reviews, students devise guidelines for writing in-teresting and informative reviews. They then produce their own reviews of the literature they’re reading in class. Finally, students compare their ideas and their pieces with published reviews of the same piece of literature.

http://bit.ly/1SOBMmMLisa Storm Fink

www.ReadWriteThink.org

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Crawley | Beyond Digital Stories: Crafting Digital Compositions for Opinion Writing

Digital compositions also incorporate standards beyond writing. For example, Reading CCSS re-quire that students analyze how visual and multi-media elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text and maintain that students should read on-level prose orally with accu-racy, appropriate rate, and expression on suc-cessive readings (NGA & CCSO, 2010, RL.5.7; RF.5.4.B). Speaking and Listening standards en-courage students to include multimedia compo-nents (e.g., graphics, sound) and visual displays in presentations to enhance the development of main ideas or themes (SL.5.5). Crafting digital com-positions for opinion pieces serves as a tool that addresses these and a variety of other standards.

When considering audience, the creation of digital compositions provide opportunities to write for wider, authentic audiences in that the pieces can be shared beyond the classroom walls. Cordi and Masturzo (2013) encourage us to “expand our classroom and teach without borders” (p. 22), helping us realize that reclaim-ing digital space and utilizing global 2.0 learn-ing can allow voices to reach hundreds, or even thousands, of others. Digital compositions can be viewed within the confines of the classroom walls or expanded to such possibilities as school broad-casts, a movie night hosted by a local theater to which parents and school faculty are invited, or publically shared via online video portals such as Vimeo or YouTube. The audiences and publish-ing venues are potentially unlimited. Thus, digi-tal compositions can be more widely distributed, engaging, and accessible in ways that traditional print-based texts cannot. This notion is espe-cially provocative when the goal is to create and share opinion pieces that persuade others and/or promote social action.

The combination of written text, images, music, and voice narration all work in tandem to construct meaning and influence mood. These tools can be particularly effective for opinion writing. Digital compositions accentuate stu-dents’ voices (Cordi & Masturzo, 2013), and when voice is included as one of the components in digital compositions, it “not only tells a vital

narrative but it also captures the essence of the narrator, their unique character, and their con-nection to the lived experience” (Lambert, 2010, p. 18). Similar to commercials students experience on the radio and television, students learn that not only their words, but also their voices and expression can become tools they can harness for persua-sion.

Because of their various nuanced com-ponents, audience pos-sibilities, and the need for twenty-first century literacy integration, digital compositions are an extremely powerful and appropriate platform for students’ opinion writing.

Fifth Graders Constructing Opinions: From Paper to Digital CompositionsRealizing that both time in the curricular map and access to technology resources would be lim-ited, I designed this project to take place during a three-week period. The beginning of our unit consisted of identifying places in the world in which we express opinions or contexts in which others try to persuade us. As a class, we brain-stormed times when we have individually tried to convince others, analyzed advertisements in newspapers and magazines, and watched various commercials available on YouTube. Through each example, we considered how word choices, specific reasons, and images support arguments. Once these initial activities were completed, I shared mentor videos with the students so that they could visualize the digital composition prod-ucts they would be working toward. One example of a mentor video we viewed, found through an online search, is entitled “Vegan Digital Story” (@justagirl83, 2007).

Digital compositions can

be more widely distributed,

engaging, and accessible in

ways that traditional print-

based texts cannot. This no-

tion is especially provocative

when the goal is to create

and share opinion pieces

that persuade others and/or

promote social action.

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Voices from the Middle, Volume 23 Number 2, December 2015

The time had then come for the students to select their opinion topics that would become the focus of their pieces. Throughout the year, we read a variety of student periodicals that included articles related to current events and contempo-rary topics of debate. Since we still had a number of extra copies available from previous issues, I encouraged students to look to these for poten-tial topics and to use facts from the articles to support their arguments. Alternatively, students could self-select topics and use the Internet or other resources to find facts that supported their

opinions.With their topics in

mind, the remainder of the first week and much of the second week was devoted to teaching craft lessons that students could utilize in their opinion pieces. The top-ics for these lessons in-

cluded organization, developing strong leads and conclusions, creating multiple reasons to support a claim, and addressing possible counterargu-ments. Through a traditional writing workshop format, the students wrote pencil-and-paper opinion pieces and garnered feedback through teacher and peer conferences. The students’ handwritten drafts would become the story-boards and scripts they would use to construct their digital compositions.

Near the end of the second week, we visited the computer lab that housed thirty desktop PCs. In preparation for this visit, I created an individ-ual folder for each student on our school’s shared network drive so that students could save their images and have a virtual workspace. We dis-cussed the importance of attribution and royalty-free images as a class, and students searched for images online they wished to use in their digital compositions. After a lesson on how music can help to establish mood and work persuasively, students downloaded royalty-free music they felt would best match their opinion piece from the

site Jamendo.com and saved the song to their in-dividual folder along with their images.

The final week of the project consisted of us being in the computer lab. To create the digital compositions, we used the free, downloadable software Photo Story 3 because it seemed more user-friendly for our initial composition project compared to Windows Movie Maker. The stu-dents purposefully and artfully mediated written text, font style and color, images, and music into their pieces. Time was also provided throughout the week for students to practice reading their pieces aloud, both independently and to a part-ner, in preparation for voice recording. School personnel and parent volunteers assisted with re-cording each student’s voice narration near the end of the third week.

At the culmination of the three weeks, we celebrated the students’ writing and digital work with refreshments and an opportunity to show-case their pieces within the classroom. The stu-dents demonstrated pride and excitement to see their digital compositions displayed on “the big screen.”

A Tale of Two StoriesThe students’ digital compositions reflected a wide range of interests and topics. Some students elected to write opinion pieces against the idea of school uniforms or in favor of using tablets rather than paper-based textbooks in schools. In-spired by an article related to National Picture Book Month, one student chose to write about the value of picturebooks in her life and why they are important. Many students advocated for lon-ger recess or less homework in their writing, and one student tackled the question of whether Na-tive American mascots should be used for sports teams. This was particularly interesting given the fact that the local high school had such a mas-cot at the time (and still does at press time). All of the digital compositions were unique to each student’s perspective and selected from their own interest. However, two pieces in particular highlight the power of the digital mode and how

The students purposefully

and artfully mediated writ-

ten text, font style and

color, images, and music

into their pieces.

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Crawley | Beyond Digital Stories: Crafting Digital Compositions for Opinion Writing

students’ voices resonate when addressing topics relevant in their lives.

Craig’s Piece on BullyingCraig was often quiet in the classroom and with-drew from participation. His work often met the standards but seemed to lack the spark and ex-tension for which I knew he was capable. On the playground, Craig often isolated himself and had difficulty maintaining relationships with peers.

Through the digital composition, I wit-nessed an increased motivation and excitement in Craig’s work. He wrote with fervor and often became a technological resource for his peers, a position he held with pride and his classmates’ admired. His support of his classmates in this project became an invaluable aid as we all learned to compose digitally together.

For his project, Craig decided to use the arti-cle “Bullying: It’s Against the Law” (Winchester, 2011) to merge research along with personal ex-periences to create an opinion piece on the need for increased legislation regarding school bully-ing. Craig shares in his digital composition, “Be-lieve me, I have been bullied myself and it not only hurts on the outside, but on the inside as well.” He reminds his audience of the power they have to affect change: “Please help by convinc-ing lawmakers to make anti-bullying laws. You can help and you can make a difference, so make one.” Craig’s digital composition is available at https://vimeo.com/113248928. Be sure to turn on closed-captioning because the narration is dif-ficult to hear.

In his piece, Craig selected a wide range of images that showed diversity in age, race, and gender. These images show that Craig sees bul-lying as an issue that affects a variety of people at many stages of their development, not just in the middle grades, although he doesn’t mention that specifically in the written text or audio narration. The use of these photographs illustrates how im-ages enhance and add meaning to the writing. In other words, Craig’s project demonstrates how

the use of additional modes constructs another layer of meaning.

Timothy’s Piece on Post OfficesEarlier in the year, students read an article about the loss of revenue experienced by the US Postal Service due to increases in electronic communi-cation. The article stated how, as a result of this revenue loss, the US Postal Service was cutting costs through such measures as raising the price of stamps, reducing hours select post offices were open, and closing post offices is some smaller communities.

Timothy saw the effects addressed in this ar-ticle in his own backyard, literally. His mother worked for the local post office that was just down the hill from his house. The post of-fice in this small com-munity already had few workers and lim-ited services it was able to offer due to its size. Timothy worried about the future of the community post office and his mother’s em-ployment. His digital story lists a number of reasons why post offices should not be closed. Near the end of his digital composition, Timothy asks readers “to fight for them” and enthusiasti-cally expresses, “We need post offices!” Timo-thy’s digital composition is available at https://vimeo.com/113248720.

Timothy’s strategic use of voice inflection and ambient effects, such as the clicking of the flip-phone, create an authentic purpose for him to read with expression and adds to a viewer’s engagement with the piece. While students were provided opportunities for teacher and peer-ed-iting, Timothy’s inventive spelling alludes to the ownership and involvement students had in their

Through the digital com-

position, I witnessed an

increased motivation and

excitement in Craig’s work.

He wrote with fervor and

often became a technological

resource for his peers, a po-

sition he held with pride and

his classmates’ admired.

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Voices from the Middle, Volume 23 Number 2, December 2015

Consider ways that digital

compositions can become

platforms for other genres

of writing.

work as well as the challenges of transference be-tween print to writing onscreen for some middle level learners.

Suggestions for the ClassroomThe students in my fifth-grade classroom were technological users both within and outside of the school boundaries. Outside of school, the young adolescents daily navigated twenty-first-

century technologies using smartphones, tablets, and computers to surf the Web, play video games, take and edit photographs, and communicate using email, texting, and social media. Within school, the middle

level students typed papers using word process-ing software, created slideshows using Power-Point, and used a variety of instructional software to practice curricular objectives. However, all of the students expressed that this project was the first time they had created such a digital compo-sition. It was also my first attempt at facilitating such a project.

The following are lessons I learned through-out this process that may be beneficial to other teachers that wish to implement similar projects in their classrooms.

1. Explore free, readily available tools. Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, and Photo Story 3 are three easily accessible tools for creating digital compositions. There are a multitude of recently developed websites and apps that make digital compositions increasingly easier to create, and each has its own unique features and capabilities.

2. Value students as tech experts. Cordi and Mas-turzo (2013) remind us that teachers should not let a lack of familiarity with digital tools deter them from engaging in such projects in their classrooms. Even if the technology is new to students, they often easily adapt, become trouble shooters, assist their teach-

ers and classmates, and discover innovative techniques.

3. Contemplate the possibilities. Consider ways that digital compositions can become platforms for other genres of writing. Although digital stories can be a powerful mode for narrative, determine ways that digital compositions can serve informational and argument writing and how they can be developed to showcase students’ knowledge across other content areas.

As I reflect back on these students’ projects and how my students since that time have composed digitally in various ways, it’s amazing to real-ize the impact the digital storytelling graduate course had on my instruction. In merely a few weeks, the fifth-grade students combined their written words with images, music, and voice nar-ration to craft cohesive, meaningful, and authen-tic opinion pieces. The result not only helped to meet CCSS and prepare the students for the state writing assessment, but it also bridged twenty-first-century technology and literacy skills the young adolescents utilized outside of school with their academic experiences within our classroom. If such work could be accomplished in three weeks, imagine the possibilities that might occur if we threaded such opportunities into our writ-ing and learning throughout the school year. In my opinion, composing digitally is well worth the investment.

ReferencesCordi, K., & Masturzo, K. (2013). Using literature and

digital storytelling to create a safe place to address bullying. Voices from the Middle, 20(3), 21–26.

justagirl83. (2007, May 13) Vegan digital story [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/YYFm NCneQLU

Lambert, J. (2010). Digital storytelling cookbook. Berkeley, CA: Digital Diner Press.

National Governors Association Center for Best Prac-tices & Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). Common core state standards for English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. Washington, DC:

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Crawley | Beyond Digital Stories: Crafting Digital Compositions for Opinion Writing

Author. Retrieved from http://www.core standards.org/ela-literacy.

Ohler, J. (2008). Digital storytelling in the classroom: New media pathways to literacy, learning, and cre-ativity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Ohler, J. (2009). New-media literacies. Academe, 95(3), 30–33, 35.

Siegel, M. (2006). Rereading the signs: Multimodal

transformations in the field of literacy education. Language Arts, 84(1), 65–77.

Vasudevan, L., Schultz, K., & Bateman, J. (2010). Rethinking composing in a digital age: Authoring literate identities through multimodal storytelling. Written Communication, 27(4), 442–468.

Winchester, E. (2011, October 7). Bullying: It’s against the law. Time for Kids, 4–5.

Stephen Adam Crawley, NCTE member since 2013, is a doctoral student in language and literacy education at the University of Georgia and a former middle grades teacher. He can be reached at

[email protected].

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