// Langwitches Blog

I had the great fortune to be invited to present a two day digital storytelling workshop for the Kau’ai Pacific School in Hawaii.

Lisa Mireles, the principal, contacted me and explained an incredible grant,  recently awarded to her school: A five year grant to transform her small school into a school of the future and becoming a model of best practice for other schools. As a doctoral candidate in educational technology and an experienced curriculum designer at heart, this principal is making her vision a reality by transforming Kau’ai Pacific School with Digital Storytelling. Lisa believes that “Digital Storytelling transcends all subject areas” and is a natural environment for her school’s  discovery units based curriculum.

A few weeks before, the faculty received a Skype visit from Digital Storytelling book guru, Jason Ohler. While his approach was to bring awareness to the process and elements of digital storytelling, I wanted to introduce the teachers to different kinds of (free) storytelling tools and hands on time to work on a group project. As part of the grant’s outreach component, Lisa had invited teachers from other schools around the island to participate alongside her faculty.

Digital storytelling is a natural fit for embedding 21^st century skills (the 4 C’s: Collaborate, Connect, Communicate, & Create).  There was no need to remind the group that storytelling is an ancient form of teaching AND learning, Kau’ai Pacific School has their own Hawaiian dance and storytelling teacher and a weekly scheduled class for all the students at the school. Wow!

My goal for the workshop participants was:

• to introduce them to a variety of different tools
• give them hands-on-time to use digital cameras, video cameras and audio recorder
• express themselves in a variety of ways
• produce stories with different audiences in mind and for different objectives

I wanted to assure teachers that feeling overwhelmed at the quantity and the array of tools available was predictable and normal. Even I continue to feel completely overwhelmed at the constant flow of new tools becoming available all the time. It seems impossible to keep up and stay abreast of everything.

Introducing so many different tools was not done with the intentions to overwhelm teachers into paralysis, but to present them with a box of different colored crayons.  The objective was to make them aware of the variety of available colors  in order to be as creative as they can be.

I asked teachers to envision standing in front of a cherry tree. If they feel paralyzed by the thought of having to pick and eat ALL the cherries off the tree, they might feel overwhelmed. They don’t need to eat ALL of the fruits off the tree in order to enjoy a few cherries. Remember to take a step back and remind yourself that if you choose to pick only a few cherries, they will taste just as good.

Something else I felt was imperative to include in a Digital Storytelling workshop was the issue of copyright.

If we give teachers all these wonderful tools and expect them and their students to use and create stories, we need to give them a way to do it legally and ethically. Bringing awareness to what copyright means and the available alternatives seems a must. Presenting resources to search and find audio, video and images to work with and include in projects is the minimum we need to give educators and students if we expect them to integrate and digital storytelling in their teaching and learning repertoire.

So, all this theory about digital storytelling, the exhibition of tools available and the how-to/hands-on approach of the workshop could be just another professional development workshop/presentation attended with no lasting impact on educator’s teaching practice and student learning … I have a feeling that it will be different for this incredible group of teachers though.

What will make a difference, in my opinion,  is their openness, feeling part of a team, belief in their school, creativity, and feeling comfortable as learners themselves.  Above all they have a leader, like Lisa Mireles ,with a vision of shifting her small school into the 21st century and the energy to learn and work right along side them.

Keep your eye on Kau’ai Pacific School and their journey over the next five years. I have a feeling that they will be a school to watch.