Week 5

Digital Storytelling- This very short chapter focused on transformations. The list on page 109 that detailed the different types of transformations that a character or person can go through was a very helpful list. Oehler compares Bloom's Taxonomy to transformations on pg. 109. This list helps the writer (whether it is the student or the teacher) to focus on what type of change their hero or protagonist is going to go through in order to make for an exciting or memorable story. Oehler also gives the teacher on pg. 111 some questioning tools to help students think more critically about the direction their story is going to take. I think often much of what happens in a classroom is accepted as "sufficient" without making students think about what they have done and even more importantly to think about how their work can be improved. I think that frequently in lower schools their is an almost "cult-like" obsession with telling students that everything that they produce is "great" so that the student isn't demoralized. This may be a reaction to earlier times when teachers were often ruthless in their criticisms and destroyed students curiosity and imagination. There does need to be some balance. I remember reading in a parenting magazine that it wasn't good to look at your child's messy early artwork and exclaim how fantastic it was. Often the child knew that it wasn't great so the overwhelming praise was actually demoralizing. What the report said was better was to focus on one element of the painting and point it out. If the child used a lot of blue paint you could say- Wow! You used a lot of blue; you must really like the color blue. The point being that you should be honest but not brutally honest (no, "this is the worst painting I ever saw in my entire life!").

I also liked how Oehler said to use the story mapping process to get an idea of how the child was growing him or herself. This is just one more example of how DST can be used very effectively for many types of assessment.