Chapter 10: Homework tonight, please watch MTV!

"Music videos are a great place to look for inspiration in this area.  They are perhaps one of the most prevalent forms of short media know to students, lasting about as long as a digital story that teachers might assign" (Ohler, Kindle Edition, 1730 of 2900).

Chapter 10 discussed other non-traditional forms of stories and story perspectives.  The above statement suggests incorporating the visual arts into DST through the use of music videos.  One of the biggest struggles I faced in my years of teaching was keeping students engaged in the curriculum and interested in the subjects and concepts being studied.  Allowing students to use media such as video and computer software to create videos showing their understanding would have been a bridge in communicating this new generation of digital natives.  

In addition to music videos being a meaningful way to tell their stories, they could be used to across the curriculum to create  stories of mathematical concepts, social studies or science related videos.  Working for the government, I don't know how many times I've heard someone refer to the School House Rock video about how a bill becomes a law.  Imagine the impact the videos would have on students if they were the directors of the videos rather than a passive audience.  It really hit me how much the world has changed when my seventy-three year old dad started talking to me about a YouTube video he had watched earlier in the day.  As educators, we need to change our perception of learning and begin incorporating the technologies that surround us to engage and motivate the next generation of students.