Desperately seeking collegial collaboration!
For the final project for my subject on Literature In Digital Environments, we need to create a digital storytelling project that is applicable for use in our professional context. Our proposed project is meant to have collaborative input from colleagues and classmates. To that end, I would love feedback regarding the feasibility, appropriateness and interest factor of some of my project ideas.
My context in brief (or as brief as possible for me):
- Primary Teacher
- Currently working as a casual only when Uni is not in session
- I have a school I do most of my work at – I’ll call it “XPS” – but I have not done much this year because of Uni and they are currently having a major shuffle in the exec as the Principal and a DP moved on in the past 6 months, so the entire Exec Admin level is shaken up.
- I will be exploring the possible creation of NESA-Accredited PD courses with a colleague who has attended their training session – in the English KLA, likely centering around English Textual Concepts.
Ideas:
“Quarantine Station Stories” – Looking at stories from the Quarantine Station in Manly – basing on a piece I wrote for Historicool magazine with several pieces of short historical fiction based on actual stories related to quarantine at the station. – Look at creating interactivity, perhaps content creation facility… connection to source documents.
- Links to curriculum – geography – places, spaces, features that suit the site for quarantine, different uses over time; History – local history (reasonably local (45 min drive) to most places I teach); English – authority (primary sources, secondary sources), genre – historical fiction
- Context – could be used at multiple schools, could be used in PD context
- Drawbacks – technical skill, might need to coordinate/get permissions from State Library NSW or Q Station for materials
“History Spots at XPS” – create some location-based (GPS or via QR code) interactive texts on the history of sites in the school based on materials they collected for a relatively recent major anniversary (100 or 125 or 150???).
- Curriculum ties – History – local site history; Geography – changes to place, space over time
- Context – very relevant to the one school at which I have done most of my recent work
- Drawbacks – requires permission from the Principal and access to the materials – may be difficult in light of the school situation, technical aspects
“Fairy/folktale Interactive” – create an interactive story using a story in the comon domain – probably fairy or folktale. Interactivity would centre on some type of English concept or textual feature, such as: changing point of view (1st, 2nd, 3rd person), change of perspective – different characters viewpoints, enhance the text (vary adjectives, adverbs, figurative language such as metaphors, similes, personification), etc.
- Links to curriculum – English
- Context: flexible for use in various schools, could be used in PD opportunity
- Drawbacks – technical and creative aspects
“Meet Mrs Simon” – Interactive introduction for use in new classes – possible a “choose your own adventure” or hypertext narrative, possibly multimedia… answering questions students have for a “getting to know you” for a new teacher, maybe also basic classroom management techniques and expectations included.
- Not strictly curriculum linked – but could link to English – describe the type of text, using multimodal texts, maybe springboard to creating their own texts; also maybe somewhere in PDHPE – introductions, forming relationships…
- Context – novel way of introducing myself as a casual teacher
- Drawbacks – finding a platform that could be used across most school/classroom contexts
“Electronic Poetry Explorations” – I have loved the variety of e-poetry I have found on the web, possibly finding a way to weave an exploration and creation process with some of the poems…
- Curriculum links – English, maybe also Music, Visual Art and Technology – as much e-poetry crosses these boundaries
- Context – usable at different schools, could work in my PD opportunity
- Drawbacks – managing access and rights to the sample poetry, finding appropriate for primary e-poetry, getting into the technical aspects of creation
Those are my leading candidates at the moment – please tell me what you think in the comments!
I can see that the technical aspects are going to be a big issue, pretty much whichever way you go. Could you combine your QR code idea (or some augmented reality) with one of your other ideas?
Technical learning curve will be a kicker on this one – which is why having something fairly easy to transfer in as content will be helpful. If I can figure out how to do it, QR codes or augmented reality (AR) or location-based narrative could be implemented across several of the scenarios listed above.
I think once I have an idea of content and how I would like it to function in my context, I will have form follow function and pick the tools and types of digital affordances to (try to) incorporate.