Madison High School in Portland, Oregon is divided into three non-themed schools. At one of these programs, the Marian Anderson School (formerly the “M” school), four teachers used digital storytelling to engage their school community in issues relevant to students’ lives and the community. This design model began with teachers creating their own advocacy and outreach project and then taking their hands-on experience to the classroom. In-class digital storytelling projects built on these same themes and included: working with a neighborhood community center to promote teen outreach, connecting students to their local heroes, and exploring the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of the Marian Anderson School school.
Teacher Video
Instructors: Anne Truax, Ben Hill, Ginny Maxam, Todd Grobey, Carrie Hooten
Participating teachers spent two days taping and assembling a short outreach video about their small school, its philosophy and design. This PD workshop models key aspects of a digital storytelling experience by asking teachers to take on the role of learners as they consider questions of audience, asset gathering, project planning and teaming while they assemble their own short video.
Student Spotlight Videos
Click below to view examples of exemplary student work. These products showcase how individual students and project teams responded to the digital storytelling design model, which incorporated familiar project-based learning criteria – the driving question, speaking and writing tasks, habits of mind, the notion of an authentic audience – as a framework for the project and the hands-on workshop.
Class Projects
Click below to view work of three of the participating classes and see how each group’s unique approach to the project responded to the common question of community and student engagement.
Note that students from a fourth group, Ms. Truax’s ELL class, which focused on a personal investigation of the diverse cultural makeup within the Marian Anderson School school community by exploring the idea of the “ordinary hero,” chose not to post their work on the Internet due to the personal nature of their projects. One student from that class, however, Kedir, was interested to share his work; his film is included in the Spotlight section above.
