August 29, 2008
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Jason Ohler, Ph.D., President’s Professor of Educational Technology, University of Alaska
Jason Ohler is an Apple Distinguished Educator, professor of educational technology, and owner and president of JasonOhler.com. He has been a digital humanist, pioneer, and keynote speaker in the field of Digital Age living, learning, and leadership for two decades. Dr. Ohler created one of the first educational technology programs in the United States in response to desktop computing that was devoted to the creative empowerment of teachers and students. He is a columnist, composer, author of many books and articles, and founder of the Art: The 4th R initiative to have art recognized as the next literacy. You can read about it in 14 languages here: http://www.jasonohler.com/fourthr. Jason is author of Taming the Beast: Choice & Control in the Electronic Jungle and editor of Future Courses: A Compendium of Thought about Education, Technology, and The Future, both TECHNOS Press publications. Jason, who lives in Juneau, Alaska, and works around the world, is a storyteller, telling tales of the future that are grounded in the past. Some call him a futurist…he calls himself a “nowist.” Technos talked to Dr. Ohler via email recently and asked him to share his views on what he says are the two pedagogical frontiers for education: storytelling and new media.
T: What are you thinking about, working on these days?
J.O.: One of the most exciting frontiers in pedagogy, educational research, and professional development concerns the use of new media projects in content areas. What should teachers accept from students, and, having accepted it, how do they assess it? In concrete terms, if students want to turn in digital stories or Web pages or multimedia projects instead of conventional essays, what criteria should teachers use to encourage and critique them? I tell my graduate education students to imagine they are talking to parents on parent-teacher night, and mom and dad ask why their child created a Web page (or digital story or other multimedia project) instead of an essay. What would they say? And how would they explain to the parents how well their kid did with the assignment?
The default medium for student work for a long time has been writing, and when it comes to writing, most teachers would assess whether an essay “works” on fairly well-established criteria. We have had centuries to develop our sense of good writing and most of us can recognize this when we see it.
Not so with new media projects. In fact, many teachers are confused by them and are asking for help in understanding them. This is an entirely responsible thing to do. They shouldn’t accept or reject them just because they are new media projects; they should seek to understand how they work and what value they offer their students.
What can we, as educators, do to encourage pre-service or in-service teachers to use new media?
There are a number of things we can do. I encourage teachers to go through the process of norming new media projects: that is, of sitting with colleagues and going through the process of figuring out acceptable assessment procedures for new media that can translate across projects. While some aspects of traditional assessment will work for new media—for instance: was it well planned, well articulated, did it meet the goals of the assignment? and so on—many will stumble on “the grammar of media.” This is where we need to involve people from other fields, like art and instructional design.
[Marshall] McLuhan said that every medium has its own grammar. That is, unless you are deliberately creating art to expand our awareness of media, then there are protocols that help us all communicate. Take the following sentence for example: “Mother bread asked me store go to.” Most would read this and understand that someone was asked by his or her mother to go to the store to get some bread. But we stumbled on the interface—it was hard to navigate among the words. Grammatical protocol was not followed. I want to emphasize that I am talking about writing clear prose, not poetry, in which case the sentence might have been completely acceptable.
So, what are the protocols, or grammar, of a Powerpoint presentation? Of a digital story? Of video? Teachers will need to team up with artists, technical people, instructional designers to get their bearings here, and then combine what they learn with their educational goals. While this can be seen as “just more to do,” it promises to be exciting and educational.
Why is this important?
It’s important for two reasons. First, because the multimedia collage is rapidly becoming an international Esperanto. The world is by default moving in the direction of “Web speak” as a language, and our students should be literate in that language. There is plenty more to say about that, but I will leave that one. And second, it is important because students are learning the language of new media by osmosis from television, iPods and the Web. Once they have an inkling of the language, they are going to start speaking it. What teachers bring to this evolutionary step in communication is wisdom more than knowledge. Teachers need to be the ones who help students focus on the power of their message rather than the power of the technology. For this reason alone, teachers are more important than ever in the digital age.
Beyond this new media language, what else is on the horizon in education?
Talking about new media provides a nice segue to the second most exciting area of educational research and professional education: how to address the current resurgence in storytelling as an educational tool. To me, if we are to take maximum advantage of storytelling in education, we need to use storytelling in all of its forms: traditional, digital, and everything in between—and there is a lot in between. When I teach digital storytelling, I begin by spending a good deal of time on telling stories without technology. I find if I can get people in touch with the storyteller within, then their stories will be better, no matter how they tell them.
But what truly interests me about storytelling is how powerful and potentially dangerous it is. That’s right—dangerous! But in a very compelling way.
“Dangerous” and “compelling”—how?
Think about it. How do you know that you are experiencing a good story? When you don’t think about it. You suddenly realize time has passed while you have been listening to a storyteller, or reading a good book, or watching a good movie and think “wow, what a story!” Yet, in education we are all about critical thinking, the antithesis of being mesmerized.
So here we are, in between two very powerful models: storytelling, with its powerful ability to engage and teach students, and critical thinking, with its ability to turn students into thinking, reflective people, consumers, voters. Obviously, blending these two offers a powerful pedagogy. In my workshops I address this by sketching out a continuum. On one end is “report or documentary,” which represents a product typically associated with the presentation and assessment of facts based on research; on the other end is “story,” which can also include research and facts, but is typically valued as an information container that has the ability to inspire and engage. I tell teachers that in education “we need to aim somewhere in the middle.”
Aiming for the middle is a wonderful new frontier in pedagogy ripe for our involvement. Stories are all around us now—when we aren’t telling them to each other, we are listening to new media tell them to us. At the same time, the need to be able to critically assess a world that seems at every turn to be trying to sell us and our kids something has become paramount. “The reflective story” is a not only a promising pedagogy for teachers to teach with, but also a powerful vehicle for students to communicate their understanding of the world, whether about chemistry, history, or something more personal. Telling stories that inspire, teach, and value the truth is a bold new adventure for all of us.
You’ve been quoted as saying that teachers are in the “personal transformation business.” What do you mean by that?
Teachers change lives; they don’t fill buckets. We all know the old saying, “Kids don’t listen to what you say; they watch what you do.” If teachers can transform themselves into fluent digital storytellers, that will be the best example to their students.
In his blog, subTECHst, Jason Ohler, Nowist, offers commentary on life, education, technology, and human nature. He is serious about soliciting feedback from readers—so please don’t disappoint him! You may also email him at: jason.ohler@uas.alaska.edu.