EDUC 5333: Blog Week #2 (Digital Storytelling)

Part 1: 

The digital story I have selected was Inequality Is Real by the Economic Policy Institute.

This story is about how inequitable the United States wealth is between the working class and the one percenters, The distribution of wealth had the bottom 90% of American with 52% of the distributed income, while the top 10% had a total of 48% of distrusted income. I believe that for the majority of people, this topic isn't the most fun, interesting, or engaging. However, I believe the author of this website was aware of this and decide to make a change to engage those who felt disconnected or uninterested. There are a variety of options here for multiple learners to take some things away in this digital narrative. There is a video with cool animations and sound effects that make learning about this topic more enjoyable. There are also modules and interactive type widgets that guide you to new, and in some cases, personalized information. The graphics, animations, and interactive widgets made learning this material more enjoyable and held my attention for longer since I was invested in seeing how the graphics would change or interact with one another during my exploration. I mostly enjoyed the interaction of being able to add a little bit of my demographics to output my results of earnings and income and how that compares to others in similar or different demographics. 

Part 2: 

Below I have provided ISTE standards via the educator/student and my content standards in which I believe this digital story is aligning and being created. I believe the target age group for the audience of this site is mainly for the working class American who may not know what, how, or why there is this issue within our economical equity across the board for every day people. I feel that this digital story has a large amount of educational value. For one, notice how many ISTE standards are aligning with this website due to its technological and digital interactive nature. Secondly, the variety and multitude of ways the information and data is explained and expressed gives each learner with different preferences an outlet to absorb the content at their own pace. The connection I see to my own content area/instruction is always wanting to have a multitude of teaching tactics. This is critical as no two learners are the same and being flexible and modifying content and expressing content in more than one way, can help a wider audience of scholars. I feel this digital story is a huge proponent to that mentality and on top of being an interesting and fun way of learning about a dry topic, many individuals will benefit for its variety it has to offer. 

ISTE Standards: For Educators 

2.3 Citizen 

2.3.a Create Positive Experiences 

2.3.b Evaluate Resources for Credibility 

2.5 Designer 

2.5.a Accommodate Learner Differences 

2.5.b Design Authentic Learning Activities 

2.5.c Create Innovative Learning Environments 

2.6 Facilitator 

2.6.a Foster Student Ownership of Learning 

ISTE Standards: For Students 

1.1 Empowered Learner 

1.1d Technology Operations 

1.3 Knowledge Constructor 

1.3.b Evaluate Information 

1.3.c Curate Information 

1.3.d Explore Real-World Issues 

1.5 Computational Thinker 

1.5.b Data Sets 

1.6 Creative Communicator 

1.6.a Choose Platforms or Tools 

1.6.b Original and Remixed Works 

1.6.c Models and Visualizations 

1.6.d Customize the Message 

1.7 Global Collaborator 

1.7.c Project Teams 

1.7.d Local and Global Issues 

And there are many TEK Texas state standards for my content that can relate to this project, but I will mention a few below: 

§130.101. Commercial Photography II Lab

(3) The student applies professional communications strategies. The student is expected to:

(A) adapt language for audience, purpose, situation, and intent;

(B) organize oral and written information;

(C) interpret and communicate information, data, and observations;

(D) deliver formal and informal presentations;

(E) apply active listening skills to obtain and clarify information;

(F) listen to and speak with diverse individuals; and

(G) exhibit public relations skills to increase internal and external customer/client satisfaction.

(12) The student develops an increased understanding of commercial photography. The student is expected to:

(B) apply the elements and principles of art to a variety of commercial photography projects;

(K) demonstrate use of appropriate, current, and industry-standard production processes to produce photographs;

(L) evaluate photographs using principles of art, commercial photography standards, and critical-thinking skills; and

(M) demonstrate use of appropriate resolution and digital file formats.

Part 3:

This story from Inequality Is Real by the Economic Policy Institute, follows the Story Core of Problem, Transformation, and Solution (Ohler, 2013). The problem is asking questions about our (mis)understandings and (mis)conceptions of the distribution of wealth in the U.S.. The goal is to communicate to the audience/user about this potentially unknown information for they can make more informed decisions in their lives through employers, voting decisions, states or countries to live in, etc.

The transformation occurs here when the audience can learn, grow, and change themselves, their attitudes, and mindsets towards this information. Being more versed and educated in these items will help them be better and more informed citizens. If the digital story provided on this site has a variety of resources and a variety of ways to communicate those resources (which is does), then the audience could grow and reach more individuals as it's shared.

The solution here is addressing the problem of educating the viewer on these economic issues. The audience may have more questions and may feel they need to do more research for themselves, but the job here has been accomplished. The creators have integrated an interesting and captivating ways to attract the user’s attention, hold it, and release them back to the wild to further their understanding of the topic or to motivate them to do their own research. 

For the Seven Steps of Digital Storytelling (Lambert, 2010), essentially, we must first look inwardly, accept our story, unpack, and deal with the emotions, plan it accordingly and appropriately, and then share it with others. Lambert discusses a lot more of the mental and emotional side to the storytelling process and I can see how the inequities of the distribution of wealth could make people frustrated and angry at how this country operates. This site used many forms of media to communicate their story and that reminded me of this quote from the Lambert reading:

"Images, videos, sounds, and other representations of events from our life can help us to reconstruct more complete memories and therefore expand the repertoire of story that we can put to use" (Lambert, 2010).

constructed story map of what the user experiences on the digital narrative of the site

Ohler, J. (2013). Digital storytelling in the classroom: new media pathways to literacy, learning, and creativity. Corwin, A Sage Company.

Lambert, J. (2010). Digital Storytelling Cookbook. Center for Digital Story Telling. Open Education Resource. (Chapters 2 - 16 pages)