Digital Storytelling Presentation at SUNY CIT 2021 Online at YouTube

The virtual presentation by Drs. Sheila Aird and Tom Mackey at SUNY’s 29th Annual Conference on Instruction & Technology (CIT 2021) is now available via YouTube. The presentation entitled Collaborating to Teach Global Digital Storytelling Online explores the revision of Digital Storytelling to embed the metaliteracy model and associated open educational resources (OER) into this fully online course at SUNY Empire State College. Specific assignments are discussed including the Selfie & Metaliteracy Video Icebreaker, Mobile and Empowered Digital Story assignments, the Final Collaborative Digital Story Project about cause defined by the students, and the Final Selfie & Metaliteracy Self-Assessment Video. The presentation explores the Digital Storytelling and Public History Virtual Museum that features student projects and provides concrete takeaways for educators to adapt these ideas to their own disciplinary and interdisciplinary settings.

Collaborating to Teach Global Digital Storytelling Online

The slideshow for this presentation is openly available as well. You you have any questions or comments about teaching Digital Storytelling, just let us know.

Collaborating to Teach Global Digital Storytelling Online

Dr. Sheila Marie Aird and Dr. Tom Mackey presented Collaborating to Teach Global Digital Storytelling Online at SUNY’s 29th Annual Conference on Instruction & Technology (CIT 2021). This year’s virtual CIT explores the theme Working Together to Prepare all Students for a Lifetime of Learning. This presentation explores the fully online Digital Storytelling course at SUNY Empire State College. It addresses the overall design of the class, specific assignments, the integration of the metaliteracy model, the use of open educational resources (OER), and ongoing revisions to build a collaborative learning community. Several resources and takeaways are provided as part of the presentation.

Open House Course Chat with Filmmaker Henry Hodge

Last week our fully online Digital Storytelling course at SUNY Empire State College held an Open House Chat with filmmaker Henry Hodge. Several students from the course attended the online chat and asked questions about the creative process, developing professional audio for podcasts and digital stories, applying theoretical knowledge in practice, the importance of editing, as well as tips for getting started and planning digital storytelling projects.

Digital Storytelling Open House Chat with Filmmaker Henry Hodge

Dr. Sheila Aird and Dr. Tom Mackey facilitated this discussion among the students and with Henry Hodge and the insights are easily transferrable to a wide range of digital media contexts.

Digital Storytelling Interview with Filmmaker Henry Hodge

As part of the online Digital Storytelling course, Dr. Sheila Marie Aird and Dr. Tom Mackey had the opportunity to talk with Henry Hodge, a filmmaker who works out of Prague, Czech Republic. Dr. Aird was previously consulting with Henry on a project and invited him to an online chat with students to inspire the emerging digital storytellers. The students were part of a digital storytelling course and collaboration that contained both United States and Prague based students. The Zoom conversation explores the importance of planning and storyboarding as the beginning piece of the creative storytelling process.

We look forward to providing additional digital storytelling resources related to our international collaboration!

Dr. Aird and Dr. Mackey

Digital Storytelling Proposal Accepted by SUNY CIT2021!

Dr. Sheila Marie Aird and Dr. Tom Mackey will present on their international collaboration to teach Digital Storytelling at SUNY’s 29th Annual Conference on Instruction & Technology (CIT 2021). The presentation entitled “Collaborating to Teach Global Digital Storytelling Online” will explore their revision of the fully online Digital Storytelling course to unite SUNY Empire State College students from around the world. The theme of this year’s virtual conference is Working Together to Prepare all Students for a Lifetime of Learning and will take place May 24-28, 2021. According to the proposal that was accepted by SUNY Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching & Technology (FACT2) and the CIT Planning Committee, this presentation will address the following:

During a global pandemic Drs. Mackey and Aird worked together as a teaching team to combine our fully online sections of Digital Storytelling to create an inspiring international learning experience. As part of this collaboration, we expanded our course at SUNY Empire State College to connect learners from the United States and Canada with students in our international partnership programs in the Czech Republic (Prague), and Albania (Tirana). This fully online course prepares students to create their own empowering digital narratives and to collaborate on a final digital story about a cause they identify and examine in a collaborative digital project. Many of the teams selected the COVID-19 pandemic as their final topic while others explored issues related to racial justice and gender equity.
CIT 2021 presentation proposal (Aird and Mackey)

Drs. Aird and Mackey are scheduled to present at the CIT 2021 virtual conference on May 26th between 2:45 PM – 3:15 PM. We hope to see you there!

Digital Storytelling Collaboration Expands to SUNY COIL Initiative

Dr. Sheila Marie Aird and Dr. Tom Mackey will continue their successful Digital Storytelling collaboration as part of a Virtual Exchange supported by SUNY Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL).

In fall 2020, Tom and Sheila combined their sections of Digital Storytelling into one fully online class at SUNY Empire State College. This collaborative course experience connects students from the United States, Canada, Czech Republic (Prague), and Albania (Tirana). In spring 2021, this collaboration will expand with additional course enhancements and OER, including metaliteracy resources developed by the Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative. They will also develop new dynamic resources specific to digital storytelling in preparation for the fall 2021 COIL collaboration course.

As part of this SUNY COIL Virtual Exchange, Sheila and Tom join a cohort of colleagues from SUNY Empire State College to share knowledge about fostering online partnerships to unite international students in collaborative learning.

Look to this blog for updates about this expanded digital storytelling partnership!

Teaching Digital Storytelling with Open Educational Resources (OER)

As we celebrate International Open Access Week 2020 (October 19-25), we share our experience teaching Digital Storytelling online in this posting Dr. Sheila Marie Aird and Dr. Tom Mackey discuss online teaching and their collaborative Digital Storytelling course. As part of this online chat, we provide a tour of the Moodle course that brings together learners from the United States, Canada, Czech Republic, and Albania. As part of this overview of our online course we explain why we revised the course to include all open access readings and resources. If you are new to teaching or learning in fully online environments due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this online chat will provide you with helpful information to be successful online!

Building Empowered Communities with Digital Storytelling

As we continue teaching our fully online Digital Storytelling course as an international collaboration, we share our latest reflections and insights as part of our zoom recording. Although this was recorded for our course, it provides you with a unique perspective on where we are in the class, how we are teaching it, and what we value as co-teachers in this environment. In this week’s Zoom dialogue we talk about the importance of building a collaborative online community, encourage learners to find their voices in the online discussions, and explore the importance of digital ethics when producing information as a digital storyteller! If you are an experienced online instructor, new to online, multimodal, or remote learning, or if your are interested in teaching digital storytelling, we hope you enjoy our latest conversation as much as we did!

(click on the image to see the video)

Window-View and Reflective Digital Stories

The first assignment in our fully online Digital Storytelling course at SUNY Empire State College requires students to create a “selfie-video” to introduce themselves to the class. The selfie-videos created by students were so inspiring we decided, as co-instructors, to develop our own visual narratives.

In Prague Through My Lens, Dr. Sheila Aird takes us on a journey through the beautiful city of Prague, Czech Republic with this window-view digital story.

Prague Through My Lens

In An Albany Story, Dr. Tom Mackey shares a few landmarks from Albany, the Capital City of New York State, with this reflective memory digital story.

This approach is an excellent way to see and hear from everyone in the course and to establish the art of digital storytelling because we move beyond text and static “selfie” pictures to communicate with digital media. Since this international collaboration extends from the United States, to Prague, Czech Republic, to Tirana Albania, this assignment is a dynamic introduction to everyone in class.

As we say in our course video Telling Your Digital Story, everyone has a digital story to tell, what’s yours?

Envisioning Your Digital Stories

As our global digital storytelling collaboration continues, we share our thoughts about the first few weeks of class and offer suggestions for script writing and storyboarding as part of the process. We share our thoughts about Envisioning Your Digital Stories during this interactive Zoom call that we prepared and recorded for students in our fully online Digital Storytelling course at SUNY Empire State College. As part of this week’s call, we also discuss the value of collaboration and peer review. At this point in the course, students have introduced themselves through original selfie-videos and are sharing their insights about defining the topic of digital storytelling itself. The concept of metaliteracy is introduced so that students start to see how being a digital storyteller relates to becoming a responsible and creative producer of information.
-Prof. Aird & Prof. Mackey