Finding New Ways to be Creative

Ds106… Did even the name sound intimidating to anyone else? Personally, it sounded out of my technological league. However, after putting some time into researching the topic, ds106 really sparked my interest. First, I learned that it stands for digital storytelling. According to one website, digital storytelling “is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories.”

Digital storytelling can take many forms. For this class, we will respond to thirty consecutive daily creative challenges. Although this task seemed quite intimidating at first, the challenges shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes to create, and they all seem really fun! Yesterday’s Daily Create Challenge was to put music behind a James Bond scene. At first, it seemed a little past my technological knowledge level; however, the website provides a link to another page, so everyone can do it, and all of the videos are in the same format.

Today (February 23) I took the leap joined the challenge. Today’s Daily Create Challenge is all about mixing quotes. The directions are to “Find an image of a well-known figure, add to it a famous quote by someone related in some way to the figure in the image and then attribute the quote to a third, related figure.” I made my challenge about poets and chose a picture of Edgar Allen Poe, quoted a poem by Emily Dickinson, and attributed it to Walt Whitman.

My Triple Quote Assignment… Poe, Dickinson, and Whitman… First of many Daily Create Challenges! @ds106dc #tdc1873 pic.twitter.com/mBi5ZZCMEC

— Timmi Keisel (@TimmiKeisel) February 23, 2017

What I especially appreciate about digital storytelling is that it puts a whole new spin on being creative. While I was in primary and secondary school, the only two outlets students had to be creative was in art class or occasionally in English class. I stopped taking art class after elementary school, and I didn’t start enjoying writing until late in my high school career. For a student like me, trying to access my creative side was a rare occurrence, but I think students should be constantly using creativity in school!

Digital storytelling would be a fantastic tool to use in my classroom. Where is a better place to tell a story if not in an English classroom? I think students would find it less intimidating than the more conventional approaches of being creative and appreciate that some methods require minimal time as well. Technology also gives students more options for being creative. For example, if students are focusing on poetry, they could first write a poem, then record themselves performing a poetry reading of their piece, and finally put (appropriate, applicable) music behind it. This assignment would mix conventional poetry writing with technology and another subject (music) as well. While this is the first assignment I could think of, there is endless technological opportunities to allow students to foster their creativity digitally.