Blog Post #4

    I don't have much experience with digital storytelling in the classroom, but I feel like I come across DST in one way or another outside of the classroom nearly every day. From the media I consume, the music I listen to, to the stories I read, digital storytelling and multimodal composition are engrained in just about all of my interests. 

    The digital media examples which I gravitate towards the most are zines, music videos, and digital storytelling. I find zines particularly appealing because they combine so many different formats, from writing, art, and photography, and the end result is something entirely unique. Furthermore, I believe zines would be interesting to students because instead of focusing on meeting a length minimum, zines are primarily released as short collections of various modalities, so instead students are focused to narrow down and reduce their ideas to be as effective as possible in such a short amount of space/length to work with. As the saying goes, "constraints breed creativity," and I think zines are a perfect example of that. Though I've never worked with zines in a classroom, I have a general idea of what they are, along with some prior experience learning about them on my own in the past.

Taking on the Big Man Taking the Big Man On by Quinn Batley

Photo by Mark Custer

    Another medium which I would love to approach in the classroom is music videos. I may have a bias because I love to play and listen to music, but nonetheless, it's undeniable that music videos have a huge influence on how music can impact the listener, and a good video will bring a piece of music to new heights, by perfectly encapsulating the song and illustrating it in a visual format. Music videos would also be a great in class activity for students because it gives students a chance to share and create art for something that is already very special and personal to them, thus they are more likely to take to it out of excitement.

    I plan to use multimodal composition in my future teaching and personal writing because writing doesn't occur in a vacuum, in other words, writing isn't influenced simply by other writing alone. For example, a song can inspire a piece of art, a poem can inspire a movie, a music video can inspire a short story, and so on. By incorporating multimodal composition in my classroom and curriculum, students will (hopefully) be more inspired to write, because they will use other forms of media to fuel their creativity, focus, and ideas. Buchanan states that "With so many different media and images, finding new ways to bring nontraditional hybrid texts into the English language arts classroom think can be challenging," and while this may be true, by letting students examine and study things that already interest them such as music videos, animation, and art, writing will come from a place of curiosity and passion, rather than simply to get a grade. Additionally, students will get a better understanding for writing as it relates to other mediums, thus nurturing their interests and making them better writers. 

 https://brokenpencil.com/news/educating-with-zines/