When do we create, produce and share more?

Today, I came upon a great post by Jeff Utecht. The post HERE is titled "What doesit mean to Disconnect". Jeff hit some great points, the definition of being connected to technology is very broad and does depend on your perspective. Please read as he is a great writer and educator.

Ok, What resignated with me? Jeff's discussion on consuming versus producing as we as in "all of us" consume a lot when it comes to technology, but what do we produce/share?

To quote Jeff "Let’s take a step back and look at what we ask students to do in our classrooms. How much time in a given day do students create/innovate/problem-solve vs how much time do they consume?

What if we changed this?

What if we created….creators?

What if we allowed students to create things……anything really?

I love these questions and I think that they should not only be applied to our students but ourselves. What if we just sat back, created, produced and shared. At best your lesson or educational ideas may improve and in some cases take off. You never know. I know that is certainly happening in #etmooc but I will be honest (for me, etmooc, has made me feel more comfortable to share, I have so much to reflect on and I know you do too).

See the following graph taking from the thinkingstick.com, do you think it is true??

Photo Credit: photosteve101 via Compfight cc

One of my goals with #etmooc was to be a producer, plain and simple and to try to spend the time giving back and learning. I try to take the time for good etiquette and link back to other's work. I also try to share and respond to anyone who was kind enough to take a moment to be a producer and left a comment on a blog post or a tweet. It is very worth while. This is how I am learning and building my network. It takes time, but it is so worth it.

I find, I spend more time in a day “commenting” and will only allow one blog post for myself. Wierd, I hope not, I’m trying to learn and I’m sick of being a lurker. So if I read your whole post, I will comment, even if I place your tweet, google + post or your blog post in diigo. I will comment and take time to decide what to say.

Today I learned that the definition of being “disconnected” really is too broad. Escpecially in today’s society where even in my own home, my husband is on his smart phone, my daughter on her kindle and me on my laptop, we find this actually “connected” for us as well are all in the same room, this is family time so we are connected both technically and physically! I guess it’s all prespective.

I really appreciated the visual from Jeff's post and it makes me sad that I spent years in the lurker category. I can honestly say, that to “create” to express and then to share” is what I am coming to find to be the essence of education not only for my students, but myself as well. Thanks as I think/ I know this post will keep me reflecting and working on producing and sharing more.

Does Storyboarding Take Creativity Away?

As I pondered the new assignments from #etmooc on Digital Storytelling, I found myself reflecting on the many ways and forms I myself have learned and taught digital storytelling. From Scratch to Animoto, Voicethread, Photostory, GoAnimate and anything really within the web 2.0 realm. I started to ponder a question I would like to throw out to the many.

How important is storyboarding? While I teach Scratch from MIT, you work with character’s called sprites and bits of code that can change your background, move each character, add have them think or talk. This I know I need a storyboard for and have always loved watching students think they have it and start programming then back to rewrite, as they change their minds. Scratch story embedded here took a great deal of storyboarding but it was again, worth the effort and I am not sure with the complexity of the visual components they could have done it without good storyboarding:

I have also taught what I consider to be “collaborative stories” on wikis. In this process, each person, begins a story and then each student in a class from 11-20 middle school students are told to add 5 – 10 sentences to the story. Within a few days you can really see which stories are taking off. So soon we are usually down to 3 to 5 stories which get added to by all members of the same class. They write their comments and then we moved them around to create pages(the full story). Feel free to view my old wiki here, story Mars done by 6th graders. Now look at the history of Mars, it took group effort. I have also left their story Dewey the Alien and the history here, you can actually see how 15-18 different wiki threads turned into some cool stories.

The stories come out really cool or silly but if you think about it no one needed to sit down and think about how many characters, setting, backgrounds or conversations they were going to have. They wrote truly from their heads with no determined plan. Are these methods two different styles both with great results or is it the complexity of move advanced software that will be seen by the eye that lends for storyboarding?

I believe and I may be wrong, that we might be taking away creativity when we ask our students for thought out well planned storyboards before they begin, for some are we losing the creative component that is the strength of digital storytelling? Curious..