Response & Reflection: Week 5

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The two chapters assigned this week are:

Chapter 2: Music remix in the classroom

Chapter 3: DIY podcasting in education

Overall, I am enjoying the chapters in this book. So far, it seems that each author addresses a tool or technique that can be used in digital storytelling by providing some history or a basic overview of what it is, followed by an instructional section, and then wraps it up by saying how it can be used in an educational setting. It makes the book easy to use and easy to follow.

  1. What are your main insights and ideas from the given reading? For Chapter 2, the main topic is about remixing, primarily as it pertains to music. In this chapter, the author talks about how even non musicians can feel like they are part of the music scene by remixing songs in order to make them something new yet something familiar. He also talks about how remixing has been used as a political statement. The main insights I gleaned from chapter 3 deal with the power of audio. The author talks about his father’s nostalgia for the day of radio, but it seems with the advent of the moving picture, the spoken word has gone by the wayside. However, podcasts have given us a chance to reclaim the power of the spoken word.
  2. What unique terminology, jargon, buzzwords, and other concepts appear in this reading that require your careful attention and definition? What are your interpretations of these words and concepts? In chapter 2, primarily musical jargon such as remix, chord progression, sampling, measure, chorus, a cappella, etc. I don’t recall too many jargon or buzz words from the second chapter. For the most part, both authors seem to speak to the language of their audience.
  3. How does this reading challenge/expand/contradict your definition of (digital) storytelling? One of the most interesting parts that come out of this is the question of creation and ownership. I also like the idea that talking/writing about something isn’t always the best way to understand or experience it. I remember so much of school being about reading about something and/or writing about it. There was some hands-on activity based learning, but it seems like most of it was still tied to the written word. So I think Chapter two and three both helped me expand my idea of digital storytelling to be the idea that stories can be experienced, more than read are written.
  4. Having engaged this reading, what are you now curious about?  What questions are you asking, particularly about (digital) storytelling? I definitely want to look more into some of the sites the author mentioned for creating my own remixes. My biggest questions has to do with how people are able to recognize how two songs are related or can go together in a remix. This also brings to mind the idea of mashups such as laying vocal tracks from one song over the musical base of another song. I’ve also recently become a fan of podcasts, as both an entertainment source as well as a tool for furthering my own education. Both of these tools/techniques seem very adaptable to digital storytelling.
  5. What additional scholarship, popular media, teaching resources, or other media are related to your developing understanding of both (digital) storytelling and this reading? As I am looking for articles to read and discuss in my blog, I am collecting a variety of links/sources to materials of interest to me personally for digital storytelling. Some of these may be related to these chapters, and some not. Most likely, they are related to either digital storytelling in general or to the use of photography in digital storytelling as that is my core focus. Here are the resources I have come across in this week’s searching:

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