Final Course Reflection and Digital Story ILT5340

Whew! What an amazing journey this has been. Three semesters in and this was my first class not in Canvas, our universities Learning Management System (LMS). It took a minute to fully understand the dynamics of community and learning as a group folded into the larger community on the Internet. However, sense of community we did establish and larger community we did connect with. I’ve been told the broader the base the higher the point of freedom, which was my overarching theme within the context of social justice.

My next epiphany was the concept of story. Digital tools aside, learning the arc, ebb, and flow of story was almost life changing for me. The ability to tell a great story is a 21st century competency that will impact your success and your ability to influence. When others can feel and fold their story into yours you create synergy, connection, community, and tribe. The social participation necessary to collaborate with great minds, different ideas, innovations, and solutions to the conditions we find ourselves in as a human race.

Then there was the Daily Create a weekly adventure into the right brain practice of creating something new. The Daily Create challenged me to take my linear hat off and imagine, then play, to innovate, and create sensory magic. Like an artists playing with the different strokes of their brushes, I got to play with Photoshop, Soundcloud, IMovie, audacity, Meme Generator, and all kinds of web 2.0 tools with different degrees of enjoyment, angst, transparency, and flourish.

I learned what worked and what didn't in the digital story critiques we completed weekly. While these stories sparked ideas of ways to tell stories and tools to use, the tools I think are best (video) are the tools I am most inept using. Nevertheless, those are the fears I sat aside and used them anyway for the final project.

There was certainly digital storytelling theory and best practices which we reviewed and critiqued through our scholarly texts. New Literacies, Everyday Practices in Social Learning by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel and Digital Storytelling, Capturing Lives, Creating Community, by Joe Lambert were my two favorites. They taught me the awesome power of reframing, re-mixing, and re-imagining narratives to bring new perspectives, ways of knowing, and insights that catalyze human connection and growth.

We have traditionally defined literacy as the ability to read and write. However, literacy in the 21st century includes that narrow definition and extends to our fluency using digital tools. Pen to paper only, means you are illiterate in the 21st century. What do we use pen to paper to do except to communicate something. Ideally folded into some kind of story if we want the story to stick. We must re-imagine and re-educate ourselves to master the “New Literacies” that comprise fluency in digital storytelling.

In my final project I shared an epiphany I had about myself, my values, mis-alignment with my values and the road back to alignment again. I plan to take a course with Joe Lambert next month as I know I've only scratched the surface of what can be.

My cohorts in this journey were just as influential to my learning as all of the texts, tools, trial, and error. What a talented creative tribe of digital natives, adopters, scholars, spirit warriors, and fun-loving fellows to traipse through this terrain with. TiAnn, Susan, Dustin, Mark, Kristin, Logan, Judith, Sara, Darren, Jennifer, Tanna, and our absolutely amazing professor Lori you all rock!!!