What is the point?

After going to the BGC on Monday, reading the most recent blog post on Professor Dolson's blog, and discussing our visit in class, the same question has been hovering around in my mind: what is the point of our visit?

In a most basic sense you could say that the point is to help the students make a digital story. On Monday I met with a girl named Latia who was timid at first but opened up to Fed and I towards the end of the hour. Unfortunately for us (and her), she had yet to do an interview with someone in the community and had not even chosen someone to work with. Because of the lack of information to work with, we ended up watching YouTube videos of her older brother for most of the session. Her brother is a student at VCU and is very interested in the arts. He has a YouTube account and uploads music videos and videos of him singing on a regular basis. Although I did not realize it until class today, her brother would be a perfect candidate for this project. She would be perfectly comfortable interviewing her own brother and already has a ton of admiration for his vocal and dance abilities. Isn't that what this project is about anyways?

This all got me thinking about why we are even visiting the kids at the BCG. Yes, on the surface, the original plan was to help them make a digital story but as of today, we are not doing that anymore (definitely the right decision). Now, our job is to get them to take the notes from their interview and turn it into a script, a video, or in my opinion, any medium through which they can express their opinion. Because..isn't that what all of this is about? It's not about spending 10 hours teaching them how to use Flickr, avoid copyright issues, or edit their voice in Audacity. This project is about establishing a common ground with the kids and helping them understand that they do have an opinion and no matter how they express it, it's worth hearing.

Boys & Girls Club: Pre-Session

Before going downtown to the Boys & Girls club we were prompted with a few questions by Professor Dolson. They were as follows:

1. What helped you the most in the making of your digital story?
2. What makes a story?

What helped me the most in the making of my digital story was mainly the fact that I had done it before. This project was much easier to accomplish because of the experience I had from doing it last year. The way I went about doing my digital story this year was not much different from the previous time except I knew exactly what needed to get done in order for the story to come out well. For example, I knew this time around that having a plethora of photos to choose from is essential before putting the whole story together. It can be difficult and frustrating to have every element of your story completed in iMovie or Photostage and to still have to go back onto the Creative Commons to find photos. In order for things to run smoothly it's imperative to have everything in the pre-production stage to be done before moving on to the production stage.

In terms of writing the script, what helped me most was the way I decided to conduct the interview. I chose broad questions to ask my professor and wrote down meticulous notes during the interview. I knew that if I had specific questions and answers at the stage it would be difficult to come up with a good script in the writing stage. What I mean by this is that when you're conducting your interview, you have no idea how it will go and what your professor will say. Therefor it is unclear what direction you will take your story in at that point in the process. After the interview I was able to go through all of my notes and pick out the ideas and points that would be cohesive in a story.

This leads into the last question: what makes a story? There are a lot of elements that can be found in a traditional story. From plot, characters, themes, there are a ton of things that make up a story. A digital story on the other hand has elements that are not as straightforward. In this story in particular we had a protagonist or "main character", but in most digital stories, they are more conceptual. It's more important to know exactly what the theme is before the direction of the story because that is what you are trying to convey.

Below I have posted my digital story along with a couple of links to different photo websites and tutorials.


My story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF9-yF5VxCE

Digital Storytelling Concepts
http://www.storycenter.org/index1.html

Creative Commons
http://www.creativecommons.com

Flickr
http://www.flickr.com

Flickr Storm
http://www.zoo‐m.com/flickr‐storm/

Audacity Download
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

High school consultation

I know I am very far behind in the high school student consultation but due to logistical issues (5 hour time difference) with the person I was consulting with, it was not until last weekend that we were able to Skype. I was given her college essay a few weeks prior to the session so I had ample time to review it. Her essay was for her common application and in case you don't remember writing that essay, basically you can write about anything. She chose to write about her most important experiences in life by examining the different shoes she wore while experiencing them. For example, her dance shoes for all of the dance teams she was on, her wellies which she wears around London, and her hiking boots from her trip to South Africa.

Fortunately for her she had no problem with her concept. Often with college essays the most difficult part is the beginning stage: figuring out what to write about. However, the essay lacked cohesiveness. She was able to talk about each shoe and the experience that when with it, but it almost seemed like 3 separate stories. In the Skype session I brought this up and had her talk to me about what the overall point was that she wanted to convey. After talking through it for a couple of minutes she was able to come up with a common theme that arose from all 3 experiences. While she was talking I wrote some notes down and relayed them back to her at the end of the sessions so she could have a copy.

I found this experience to be very beneficial to me as a writing consultant. Considering it was the first time I had ever properly consulted with someone I thought it went very well. Even though we consulted from two different continents, the session went just how I expected any normal consultation would go. It was nice to be able to put into practice all of the things we have been talking about in class in terms of how to run a good session. I made sure that she was talking for most of the time and I was listening, taking notes, and synthesizing her ideas. I did notice however that I had to do a bit more for the student than I would in a normal session. The reasons for this are 2-fold--she was probably very nervous to be meeting with me and she is still in high school. There is a big difference between high school and college level writing and it was quite evident in her essay. However, I noticed that the same theories applied in terms of how to be a good consultant so it did not matter either way. The experience altogether made me realize that our roles as writing consultants are not just to help college students but can really be used on anyone.

Shadowing

Yesterday I shadowed with one of my friends who is a writing consultant at the Writing Center. We met with a freshman who needed help with one of her essays for her FYS. Before she came I read through the student's paper to see the marks that the consultant wrote. I noticed that there were a few grammatical errors that she underlined but for the most part there were just questions written in the margins. I asked her if she did this for all of the papers that she edited and she replied that when she notices that there are a lot of structural errors then she simply writes questions down to ask the writer.

Eventually the student showed up and she seemed very flustered. The consultant asked her to explain what her thesis was and she struggled to do so. The consultant did a very good job calming her down and helping her voice her points. She established a friendly relationship from the beginning which set a nice mood for the session. It seemed like the student really didn't have a sense of what her thesis was so the consultant listed out the 3 main points that were in the paper. Once the student saw her points listed out clearly and concisely it was much easier for her to come to conclusions about her paper.

I drew a lot of good things from this session. First of all, I always knew that it was important to establish a comfortable setting for the student but to see it in practice was very beneficial. The consultant noticed how flustered the student was about her essay so before they even began talking about the paper she reassured the student that they would work through the problematic bits and come up with a proper thesis. Overall it was a very beneficial experience and I was glad that I was able to draw so many good things from it.

Response to today's digital stories

Today we watched the first 8 digital stories in class and I was pleasantly surprised at how good they were. Not to say that I was expecting mediocre work from my classmates, but in the past I was particularly unimpressed by students' ability to make digital stories for the first time. Last spring I took English 103 and most of the stories we watched in the class were good but a lot of them lacked depth.

Some things I found very interesting while watching the digital stories were the similarities between student's and professor's writing process. For example, one of the stories brought up procrastination. That particular professor found it all too easy to put off the writing process altogether rather than sit down in focus. I found this to be very intriguing because I often forget that professors are not perfect writers. Yes, most of them have PhD's and have written dissertations that would make my head spin, but everyone struggles in writing.

Another similarity I saw between students and professors was the idea that writing is a process. This is something I focused on in my digital story because I think it is crucial in understanding what writing is. To be a good writer is not something tangible or reachable. Writing is an everlasting process that will continue to change as we mature and develop intellectually. Not only do we learn different methods of writing in general but a lot changes within our subconscious. Analyzing and contextualizing information becomes increasingly easier as we continue to read and write and that is the case no matter how skilled you are. All in all I was very pleased with the stories we watched in class and look forward to watching the rest to see what other similarities rise to the surface.

Comments=Identity

For class on Wednesday I wrote an essay in response to Richard Straub's article "The Concept of Control in Teacher Response: Defining the Varieties of 'Directive' and 'Facilitative' Commentary". I addressed several points in my 2-page paper but something I decided to leave out and save for my blog is his point about the sense of identity teachers have over their comments. The exact quote is as follows:

"Teacher response is still dominated by the concept of control-largely, I think, because it goes to the heart of our teaching and our identity as teacher"

After reading the quote I underlined it because I knew I would want to write about it on my blog. The reason I picked it out specifically is because it made me think of teacher comments in a way I never have before. As a student, when I read over comments that my teacher makes I usually imagine the teacher themselves being there. That is not meant to sound creepy, but in my head I am able to understand the comments in the context of the class. What's weird is that I never realized that by doing that, I was interpreting them in the way they are meant to be interpreted. In addition to this, I came to realize how important a teacher's commenting style is. Most professors tend to have a specific style and stick with it for every piece of writing they comment on. It is a style in itself just as much as the way that they write essays or any other piece of writing. I then began to think about my style of commenting and how it has not changed in a very long time. My writing has improved and so has my ability to read but the way that I approach and asses other people's writing has ceased to change.

Overall, Straub lead me to many different conclusions about the role of teacher commentary in students' writing but what I found to be one of the most interesting points was its direct reflection of the teacher's identity.

Writing: It's a Collaboration

Last night I went to a friend's apartment in the hopes of getting help on my Jepson Leadership School application. By that point I had about 2/3 completed but needed a lot of help. My friend Carly, who is currently in the Leadership School, read through the first question and my response. At first I was nervous to have her read my writing because I tend to be rather sensitive when it comes to criticism (no matter how constructive it may be). Like any good consultant, Carly went over all of the positives in my answer. This helped to build my confidence and made it a lot easier to hear some of the suggestions she had. She could tell I had a few insecurities about my answer and decided to have me read it out loud. After reading through it I could see exactly what I wanted to change and what didn't work. We talked through the problems and without even going back to the writing, I had a much better understanding about what I wanted to write.

I had yet to start the last question which asked: "pick a book that we have read in a previous class and describe why it would be beneficial to implement it into the leadership curriculum". After initially reading the question I had no idea what I would write about. I had only taken a few classes where we read full books and I couldn't really remember what most of them were about. Carly had the suggestion that I go through the essays I wrote from last year to get ideas and refresh my memory. I read over an essay that I wrote in my Anthropology 101 course last fall and was pleasantly surprised. I forgot about an ethnography I read and wrote a paper on about the drug trade in East Harlem, New York. I was able to form a great answer to the question and ended up feeling very positive about my writing.

Overall, the whole experience of working with someone else on my writing was very beneficial. I don't normally have other people read over my work but I felt like if I want to be a good writing consultant, I have to understand what it is like to be in the writer's shoes. I now know the kind of sensitivity writer's harbor over their writing and how to help them simply by getting them to talk about their writing. Now I am very excited about being able to help someone else in the same way Carly helped me!