Week 1 - Introduction

I was born and brought up in Edinburgh, Scotland, and did my first degree at Edinburgh University, but I have lived in California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, since 1996. My husband and I met at university in Edinburgh and ended up moving back here where he is from. We have two grown children. Our son is a computer programmer, and our daughter has followed me into teaching. I am a Special Education Teacher (Resource) at Pittsburg High School, around 40 miles east of San Francisco, California. I have been teaching for around 20 years and co-teaching Geometry for the last few years. I have a General Ed. Math credential in addition to my Special Education one, and have often specialized in math over the years. I am co-chair of my department and a member of the Ed. Tech team which provides support and training for our fellow teachers in Educational Technology.

I find the idea of digital storytelling interesting. I'm not entirely sure what my story will be but am considering telling my personal health journey since I've gone through something of a transformation over the past 15 months or so in health and fitness, and perhaps my story could inspire others. I have also learned a lot of information along the way, and have heard lots of other people's stories, so I know how powerful those can be. It really helps to know that other people experience some of the same challenges in life and to see how they have met those challenges. When learning new skills and ways of being it helps to get ideas from others who have gone before, or are in a similar place now. I get a lot of support and ideas on social media.

When reading this week's resources about digital storytelling, I noted that some of the articles made the point that storytelling is an ancient art for humans, and is a very natural form of communication. They also talk about how the rise in technology has come with a rise in people using technology to tell their stories. For example, Davis and Foley point out that "Smartphones and dissemination platforms like YouTube have given rise to an unprecedented explosion in participatory digital storytelling by non-professionals." (Davis & Foley, 2016, p. 317). I reflected on the fact that this is a huge change since I was in high school myself. Most stories I would have access to at that time were either told in person by someone I knew or were professionally published in a magazine, or book, or broadcast on TV, but now if you go online, on social media or YouTube, there are all kinds of stories out there, made by all different kinds of people. I also found Stanley and Freeman's 2017 account of digital storytelling being used to allow disengaged high school students to tell their stories interesting. It seemed powerful that the educators learned important information about the students in the process, as well as the students themselves being empowered and engaged to tell their stories. The Digital Storytelling Cookbook by Lambert (2010) seemed like it had a lot of very useful information to use as a guide when making a Digital Story, so I definitely want to refer back to that one when I am writing my own.

REFERENCES

Davis, A., & Foley (2016). Digital Storytelling in Handbook of Research on the Societal Impact of Digital Media. EBSCO Publishing. (25 pages)

Lambert, J. (2010)Links to an external site.. Digital Storytelling Cookbook. Center for Digital Story Telling. Open Education Resource. (Chapter 1 - 8 pages)

Stanley, B., & Freeman, L. A. (2017)Links to an external site.. Digital storytelling as student-centered pedagogy: Empowering high school students to frame their futures. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 12(21). (17 pages)