Quote: "The problem for many students is their focus on the power of the technology rather than the power of thier stories. Some students are engaging the medium at the expense of the message, producing a technical event rather than a story. Part of my task as a digital storytelling teacher is to teach students how to be storyrellers. Two important components of my approach to teaching storytelling are story mapping and practicing written and oral story telling before bringing in digital elements."
Reaction: Ohler makes complete sense when explaining how children are focusing too much on the technology of digital story telling rather than the importance of their story and what they are trying to say in their story. I feel this way because it happened to me as well. While doing my own digital story I became fixated on all the cool things I could do to my story rather than focusing on the overall message and feeling I wanted the audience to feel. I didn't even realize this until I read this article and then went back to my digital story. If this is a problem for a college student than I can only imagine how bad of a problem this is for younger children. I think its great idea that Ohler is teaching written and oral storytelling first to get the children knowledgable of the basics of storytelling then eventually introducing digital storytelling as another form of digital media in the classroom.
Resource: Ohler, J. (2005). The world of digital storytelling. Retrieved from http://www.jasonohler.com/pdfs/digitalStorytellingArticle1-2006.pdf
Related Resource: This website is a great way to get good ideas about using digital storytelling in the classroom!
http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/
Great job relating this article to your digital story experience. It is very important, especially in elementary and middle school to teach the importance of composing a story in written and oral form.
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