Desperate SBTS

The Collaborative ABC Project: Using Technology To Tell Stories
Kevin Hodgson & Bonnie Kaplan

Kevin and Bonnie use a wide variety of Web 2.0 tools to tell the story of how they developed and accomplished the ABC project This project asked the contributors to compose a personal digital story based on randomly assigned letters of the alphabet in any application they chose, post it in you Tube and use JumpCut to collaboratively edit the presentation, so the presentation itself employed many new Web 2.0 tools. I was not familiar with just about all of these tools. So the opportunity to participate in the presentation was an education, in addition to learning about the project. The opportunity to receive their information via different web based software programs allowed me to experience these different ways of conveying information for myself, make comparisons, and judge their effectiveness. I almost forgot that this presentation was under the Professional Learning communities banner – as it seemed as much about learning to use Web 2.0 technology as it was about professional community development.
I think this is an important observation. The purpose of organizing people into a community should not be the existence of the community . If we manage to come together as a community – then bravo for us – but if there is no purpose for our gathering, then our interaction will become very parochial and inwardly focused , and we will quickly tire of ourselves and go our separate ways. I think that coming together for mutual support is important, but if there is also not some other goal toward which the group is working, the group will soon collapse on itself. The people of the ABC Project community came together to help one another develop their stories using new Web 2.0 tools– and by so do doing, teach themselves how such a project might work out and to learn from their successes and difficulties. Their goal in so doing was so they could share this experience with others and also so they could become “experts” in this new area of communicating and collaborating – to better provide leadership for such a project in the communities that the work with and serve.
I thought it was interesting that Kevin reported some difficulty with some of the e]web based software that they tried. in particular he stated the JumpCut did not perform as ell as thy had hoped. I am wondering if this is because web based software is new – and the developers haven’t worked out all the kinks? If so – then will Web 2.0 software developers make modifications based on the experiences of user like Kevin and Bonnie? I guess I hope these tools will improve in the areas of users friendliness in the future, for the sake of those of us who will try to encourage teachers to use them in the classroom with children. Or maybe teaching students to deal with the promises as well as the pitfalls of using Web 2-0 tools is part of the lesson plan based on these tools.

As I listened to Kevin’s podcast describing the process of pulling this project together I was encouraged to know that he appears to be in the same boat we are in – just learning about these tools and being excited by them, yet wondering where they will have application in a school curriculum and how to implement them in the classroom. If either Bonnie or Kevin had attempted to implement this project in their own local settings, my guess is that they might not have been as successful. I work for a fairly large ES and I cannot imagine gathering enough people to participate in an experimental project such as the one they attempted. The connectivity afforded through blogging and the web allowed them to include participants from a greater pool of possible participants and accomplish the task.

Filed by sepowell50 at 5:33 pm under Uncategorized
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