Techie Friends are Good to Have

I am blessed to have a friend who is also our school technology teacher.  She teaches kids amazing skills like how to build web pages, how to make videos, how to create an online video newspaper, as well as myriad other tasks that involve technology in a way I will never understand.  She is an amazing woman and I am constantly in awe with her ability to keep up with technology! 

Technology and I get along about as well as a wet cat and a hungry dog.  Don’t get me wrong,  I try to keep up with technology; I have even convinced myself that I need to utilize it more fully in my classroom.  The problem is that everything I try to do that involves technology involves a huge learning curve.  That’s right—me sitting in a room near a wall so I don’t need to travel far when I feel the need to beat my head against something.  I would like to attribute it simply to age, but that’s not fair or correct, as my wise technology friend is older than me and she has no problem whatsoever keeping up.  So, I persevere.

Today my technology savvy friend found me in my room trying to create a wiki for this class.  To be honest the only thing I really know about wikis is the word sounds like Waikiki, which is a nice place to visit.  It took me awhile to find Wikipedia long ago, and by the time I did, it was blasé and old school.  So much for being hip!  But today I had just succeeded in creating a wiki and I even got a couple of students to go onto my new wiki and try responding.  Success!  I was feeling a little full of myself, so I asked my friend what she knew about digital storytelling—yet another opportunity to play with technology.  Well, an hour later, I had been , in the words of my students, “schooled.”  Gosh, who knew there was so much to know about digital storytelling!

Ginny, the techie, showed me a plethora of sites that support digital storytelling.  She hooked me up with some digital stories made by teachers in my own district—digital stories of fieldtrips elementary teachers had taken with their classes, a digital story of lunes (a particular type of poetry), digital stories of children’s books, and much more!  I asked her if she felt there was a true, applicable use of digital stories in the classroom. Again, I got schooled!  She had such a great array of ideas that I got so excited and exclaimed, “I want to do all of my teaching with digital stories!”  Her response, “Ah, I don’t think that’s the best idea.”  Good point, friend.

But, Ginny did teach me so much about digital storytelling and its possible uses in my classroom.  I can already imagine a modern day retelling of Beowulf or Canterbury Tales.  Maybe my kids would be excited to do a digital story to accompany their “This I Believe Essay” or a digital story of their favorite piece of poetry.  Or a great digital story on what they want their lives to look like ten years from now.  What about vocabulary digital stories?  Could it be possible?  It could happen, I think.  Indeed, yes it could!

One of the most exciting aspects of technology continues to be that it challenges our teaching.  We can create such powerful learning experiences for our kids through technology and digital storytelling is just another way to do that.  It never ceases to amaze and inspire me that the possibilities are endless.  Now, if only I can rein in my enthusiasm and demonstrate a little practicality!