Promoting

• How can the use of digital storytelling and dynamic media promote the development of understanding in the classroom?

Think back to your foundations of education classes.  Mine was mostly in the dark with only the light of an overhead projector to illumine my notebook paper as I hurriedly took notes on the history of education.  Our professor had taught the course one to many times and I believe she had all the information memorized.  I am also pretty sure she hardly inhaled as she recited all the necessary information we needed to know.  Ironically, one of the concepts I hastily scribbled down was Bloom's Taxonomy.  Remember this?

Or a revised version... this?

Our goal as teachers is to ask our students to spend time in the highest levels of thinking.  Students will learn, remember, but more importantly understand best if we employ the highest level of thinking.  While good teachers may still ask their students to take notes in class, they do not rely on note-taking and memorization as the only means for learning.  They have their students take the information, and like a ball of clay in a student's hands, rework it to produce something new.  

Much like fingerprints on a clay vessel, often when a student reworks the information to produce something new, the student works a bit of himself or herself into the product. Therefore, they are much less likely to lose what they have learned as they "own it" now.  They have seen the information from many different angles, explored it, and made it their own.  

Digital storytelling and dynamic media do just this in our classrooms.  They give us a tool to help our students own the information we present to them.  Creating digital stories and participating in dynamic media cause students to dwell in the highest levels on thinking... just where we want them.

Check out the following article for more information on the impact of digital storytelling and student learning...

"Digital Storytelling:  Helping Students Find Their Voice"

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Churches, Andrew.(April 1, 2008). [Bloom's Taxonomy]. Retrieved from http://www.techlearning.com/studies-in-ed-tech/0020/blooms-taxonomy-blooms-digitally/44988

Churches, Andrew.(April 1, 2008). [Bloom's Taxonomy Revised]. Retrieved from http://www.techlearning.com/studies-in-ed-tech/0020/blooms-taxonomy-blooms-digitally/44988