Day Two-digital story workshop

This day was to be finishing up scripts, getting the story as an audio VoiceOver file, and begin making the cake of the digital story. There were quite a few technical difficulties, more than should be expected. The calmness of the facilitators helped the group and amazingly, this group was stacked with individuals who tend to take things on themselves and all moved forward. Again, the facilitators were more challenged with things they had no control over, but kept it without drama and making it a better than might have been experience hampered by problems.

I had worked on my script the night before. I actually came in with less than 260 words! My story was different than many in the workshop. I was not going back in time, but just a little back and in the present and while it is a personal story that only I can tell, not one that could not be experienced by others. I also had the curse of more visuals available than others because the story was about visuals. Keeping it 3 minutes or just a little more was going to be difficult with access to over 100,000 photos! I also needed to focus on the fact this is a story - not a slide show or presentation. The subtle difference is what makes it important.

As things were going on, I found the experience was very much what we have been talking about for students. Self directed, personalized learning, where the learner is in charge and responsible.

We all could have moaned and groaned about all the tech failures. We all could have sat there and wait to be told what to do. but we didn't.

Instead, we knew we were given a "digital cookbook"' it had all the steps in it. but, if I didn't look ahead at the goal, a story completed.....I could have sat there and had nothing. I could have been the student waiting for permission to go to the next step. I could have been the student that needed every step viewed and acknowledged before moving on to know if I was doing it right instead of knowing I was doing what was right for what I needed to learn. I could have been the student to disrupt others because I didn't realize the empowerment of collaboration and independent focus meant.

This experience has shown me we are not that far off from transforming education into personalized learning. We need to begin in helping all learners understand the power of personalized learning. Personalized learning in the meaning of owning it yourself and not waiting for others to tell you what step or where you should be or measuring your achievement on any other goals but the high ones set for you.

This was not what the workshop was to deliver. It was to deliver the support and best practice of creating a digital story that carries meaning and value as a communication. It however became more for me.