Final project feedback plea

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!

2 thoughts on “Final project feedback plea

  1. 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?

    1. 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.

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