Storytelling keynote at PETE-C

Jason Ohler's (http://www.jasonohler.com/index.cfm) keynote at the PETE-C conference:

We need to open doors. All the testing in the world means nothing unless that door opens.

Kids are banging on the door. We need to let them in.

Every screen is a screasel - screen + easel

Kids are consuming and producing the media forms of the day

Literacy - students need to be able to write whatever they read.

Not words, but a collage.

Why literacy changes? Read and write, moving images Free stages , venues, art

Web 2.1 - colors, music, images and not just text

Web 3.0 - semantic web - we may have too much information - recode the web so a report comes up collating everything instead of just hits. Need a better way of searching, organizing, and presenting.

9 digital lit action guidelines

1. shift from text-centrism to new media collage
2. value the writing more than ever - not the assessment anymore - Visually differentiated text - chunked information instead of a page of a bunch of text.
3. Adopt art as the next literacy
4. Follow DAOW of literacy - Digital-Art-Oral-Written
5. Attitude is the aptitude - intelligence now is the ability to deal with new tools
   
6. Practice private and social literacy. Not enough to be individually literate anymore.
7. Develop literacy about digital tools.
8. Fluency, not just literacy. The person who best understand the tools and leveraging it for what you want to do. Collective intelligence for where you want to go.
9. Harness both report and story...embrace story. the way you shape the information - it is the container that holds the information.
   

Kids come to school wired for story. They get information in a list ordered format. When they say they don't get it, they really don't see it without the context of a story.

Beat copyright and create your own stuff. Overuse of music in production is a problem.

Assess the total package: research, writing, planning, media fluency, literacy blending

Story core - need problem (tension) and a solution (resolution) - A story without transformation (growth) is not successful. Inquiry, discovery and the transformation is learning.

rolling ball idea - create the problem in the story. Music is subtle and hooks you in.

Emotional flow vs. flow of motion

things are not good or bad - it is either clear and compelling or it is not

Find media development process grid - important to brainstorm, and then peer pitch to others. Storyboard (powerpoint is a great storyboard)
Write/speak.record
Media list, get media

Danger with storytelling. Story + critical thinking is what we need to do. Don't rule by concern. Turn concerns into goals. A concern is a negatively turned goal.

My notes: My emphasis is in bold. What if projects became more like stories that show learning? Not sure about this yet. It is sometimes difficult to look at Science in other ways but collections of fact. I am mulling this over and thinking of testing it out. In the least, the podcast items students create for class can be more engaging if presented in a story format.

Tags: Jason Ohler, PETE-C