Call for Reviewers

This six-week-long project was implemented as part of a methods course taught during the fall semester in a four-year teacher-preparation program. Eight preservice teachers participated in this project. They were childhood majors with different concentrations. All of them had access to digital camcorders (or to a digital camera with a video-shooting function) to shoot videos; and all of them used a movie editing tool (Microsoft Movie Maker) to edit a video clip. The class was held at a computer lab, and preservice teachers could work collaboratively or individually. An Instructional Technology faculty member participated in two sessions to demonstrate the video production process and to provide technical help.

Preservice teachers learned how to use Movie Maker and blogger in the first session. Technology was not a challenge to most of them because the two tools are easy to use. At the beginning, few of the preservice teachers were anxious about using the video technology. After hands-on demonstrations and scaffolding instruction, they were able to grasp the gist of how to use Movie Maker. They quickly learned how to capture videos, arrange images and videos with a timeline tool, insert music clips or narrations, and publish streaming videos. Then, the two challenges that the preservice teachers had yet to overcome were to find a topic appropriate for the story-format delivery and to tell the resulting story in a way that would engage the preservice teachers’ students.

To help preservice teachers familiarize themselves with the digital storytelling, the instructor demonstrated several examples and explained the structure of these digital stories. The digital-storytelling cookbook (Lambert, 2007) has detailed instruction regarding the elements that a good story should have. In any digital-storytelling project, the most important element was the story’s use of questions that will capture students’ attention and motivate them further to learn about a concept or a subject through the elaborated explanation via story format. Therefore, in this project, preservice teachers had to start off discussing their ideas with peers and then discussing the draft script with the instructor. The instructor also discussed the basic copyright issues with them and encouraged them to use no copyrighted materials (music, images) in their design of digital stories. Appendix A lists web sites that provided copyright-free resources.

After their completion of video productions, the preservice students had to upload the video clips to the Google free video server (http://video.google.com). They were required to post the video clips on the class blog and share their reflections on it. To protect their privacy, all participants were instructed to use only a first name or an alias on the blog. Blogger provides label features that, in this case, enabled preservice teachers to categorize their digital stories on the basis of subject areas. These categories made the retrieval of digital stories more efficient.

The instructor provided grading rubrics (see Appendix B) to the preservice teachers for their video productions and critiques. Each of the video-production rubrics fell into one or more of the following six categories:

1. 
   Planning and organization: the video clip needs to have a clear focus and a proper sequence to promote students’ learning.
   
2. 
   Audience engagement: the video clip includes inviting or striking strategies that continuously engage students in the learning tasks.
   
3. 
   Production (Author’s voice): the video clip communicates clearly the author’s intention to promote students’ learning.
   
4. 
   Power of tools: the video clip demonstrates the author’s effectiveness and mastery of the video-editing tools.
   
5. 
   Publication: by uploading the video clip (as a streaming video) to the video blog, the author demonstrates his or her video-publication abilities.
   
6. 
   Critiques: each preservice teacher evaluates each video clip on the basis of the following questions:
   

• 
  How did this video clip align or not align with the learning objectives of the lesson unit?
  
• 
  Does the video clip meet the instructional needs (and, if yes, how)?
  
• 
  If you were the instructor, what other video clip might you create for this lesson?
  
• 
  What is the best thing about this video clip?
  
• 
  How could the development of this video clip be improved in terms of goals and objectives and the unit, as well as in terms of the presentation elements such as caption, title, and music?
  
• 
  Would you adopt this unit plan and video clip if you were a teacher? Why?
  

The instructor encouraged the preservice teachers to submit a working proposal to a university-wide conference called the Symposium on University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE). It is an event that provides both undergraduate and graduate students a unique opportunity in which they can present academic research, engineering projects, visual art, and other forms of creative expression. Overall, the event constitutes a common forum for college-wide communication among faculty and students. The participation was voluntary. While conducting the current study’s project as a keystone assignment, all the preservice teachers thought that they should give the symposium a try and that that the symposium would enable them to add credentials to their resume for future job searches. The timeline of the current study’s project fit the timeline of the symposium’s call-for-proposals. The preservice teachers received guidelines and scaffolded instructions regarding both the teachers’ collaborative completion of the proposal and the teachers’ submittal of one group proposal. The proposal generally described the digital storytelling in teacher education and highlighted each story’s content focus. The proposal was accepted by the SOURCE committee and the preservice teachers made a group presentation at the conference. Though the presentation format was group-based, the president of the university, invited by the Symposium, recognized each preservice teacher by mentioning his or her name and by presenting each preservice teacher with a certificate and a monetary reward at the closing ceremony. This conference presentation experience fulfilled the donate principle of engagement theory to ensure that the preservice teachers completed a realistic project in an academic context. The preservice teachers’ experience of receiving some professional recognition will strengthen the likelihood that, as full-fledged teachers, they will successfully transfer higher knowledge and higher skills to classroom settings.

The digital-storytelling project was successful. All preservice teachers developed digital-storytelling video clips, posted their clips on the blog, shared reflections with peers, and presented their projects at the SOURCE conference. They reported that their experience of the digital-storytelling project had been positive, that they had strengthened their multimedia-use knowledge and their multimedia-use skills, and that this strengthening had enhanced their curriculum articulation and creative expression, their technology confidence, their motivation to use technology, their abilities to design materials, and their level of satisfaction regarding blog use for idea exchanges.

Evidence shows that preservice teachers perceived vlogging as a positive experience. They reported

1. 
   Positive experiences with digital video production and blogging
   

I enjoyed this blogging experience. I think it was great to share my unit and video, and I enjoyed reading everyone else’s comments. I enjoyed making the video and thought it was a good tool to learn to use in order to bring it into the classroom. I was surprised at how easy it was to make the video and how well the video turned out. This is something I am definitely going to use in the future, and I am happy that I took the time to learn how to do it. I think the video is really great to use with students. It’s something that grabs their attention, and for some students, it makes information clearer and easier to understand. Every teacher should consider learning how to make videos and bring them into the classroom. They will definitely add to the lesson and engage the students.

2. 
   Increased technology-use confidence in terms of teaching and learning
   

I didn’t realize how easy it is to make a video clip of my own, one that suits my lesson exactly, that I can use to better teach a lesson to my students. Eventually, when I get a job as a teacher, I definitely feel like I might want to use some of the skills that I learned here to help enhance my lessons.

3. 
   Video blogs became educational community-oriented resources that enhanced preservice teachers’ reflection skills and teaching skills
   

I think it’s a great idea to have our work shown on the blog for other teachers to get an idea of a video they can create and get some great ideas on how to teach a lesson on many different topics. I also like the fact that our peers can critique on each other’s work. It makes you think of what you could have improved on in the unit and on the video. I really enjoyed the whole experience; it helps me grow as an educator.

From the instructor’s perspective, the project was successful in terms of the following achievements:

• 
  All preservice teachers achieved the major course learning goal—using multimedia communication to articulate curriculum and to foster teaching and learning through collaboration. In this case, all preservice teachers created a content-specific video production that aligned with standards and that could be used in an authentic context for teaching and learning.
  
• 
  All preservice teachers created their own storytelling project that met instructional needs, and the teachers published each project on the video blog, which strengthened reflective practices in a community of learners.
  
• 
  All preservice teachers were intrinsically motivated to carefully design their projects and share educational resources through a video blog.
  
• 
  All preservice teachers established a community of learning where they worked as a team to present their finished project to a real world and a real audience.
  

Preservice teachers need an opportunity to produce evidence of their learning through authentic engagement in meaningful tasks, including tasks that the teachers can take with them into the real world of teaching. This study created such a meaningful task by using engagement theory incorporating technology whose function was to strengthen preservice teachers’ curriculum articulation and creative expression. This researcher proposes that the success of this function will strengthen the likelihood that the preservice teachers can successfully transfer their knowledge and their skills to classroom settings. One important duty of teacher educators is their infusion of multimedia-communication tools into the methods courses. In addition to its intrinsic merits, this infusion is important insofar as the teacher educators model the related practices to preservice teachers. And teacher educators should ensure that preservice teachers’ familiarity with multimedia communication techniques spans the width and breadth of curriculum. In this way, preservice teachers can draw connections among otherwise discrete concepts, procedures, and applications. Once the preservice teachers become full-fledged teachers, they can re-create these connections to motivate elementary school students, to build understanding, and to promote the application of knowledge and skills to real-world issues. The current study’s case involving video production and a blog proved to be a successful educational engagement experience.

It is important that instructors acquire training in the application of multimedia communication tools to curriculum delivery. In this study’s case, a faculty member from the Instructional Technology program trained the course instructor to use Movie Maker and Blogger. In turn, the instructor made two types of video clips differed from each other in terms of their instructional requirements and their instructional purposes. The two cases, however, constituted an opportunity for teacher educators to model technology use to preservice teachers. In addition, the instructor worked closely with preservice teachers on selecting and designing video clips through which the preservice teachers could align their lesson objectives with corresponding standards. In the beginning, preservice teachers exhibited some anxiety about the need to learn new technologies and to infuse them in the lessons. However, in the end, all the preservice teachers found it easy to adopt new technologies as long as the instructor provided the preservice teachers with proper demonstration, proper training, and authentic engagement in meaningful tasks.

Educators should embrace and use new technologies, should infuse them into the appropriate methods courses, and should model appropriate practices in the classrooms. Educators should display a passion for infusing new techniques into teaching and learning and for exploring novel uses of new technologies. Educators who practice the above-mentioned strategies can allay preservice teachers’ anxieties regarding technology use. After overcoming their anxiety, preservice teachers, as full-fledged teachers, will be more likely to integrate technology into their classrooms and to design student-centered activities for their students (Hernández-Ramos, 2007). There is another compelling reason for which teacher educators should help preservice teachers perceive the value of video technology: the National Board Certification (NBPTS, 2003) began requiring preservice teachers to submit video with which the board could analyze the candidates’ classroom teaching. Yet, this use of video technology is only one among many. For example, in the classroom, educators can apply video technology to documentary-making (Gardner, 1994), to demonstrations of procedural knowledge (Gimenez & Saenz de Jubera, 2001), to familiarization of disabled learners with procedural knowledge (Graves, Collins, Schuster & Kleinert, 2005), and to students’ discovery of less evident ways to express ideas beyond writing (Scot & Harding, 2004).

As for future-research suggestions, researchers could conduct longitudinal studies that trace how these preservice teachers as full-fledged teachers transfer knowledge and skills to real classrooms. These studies could examine how the preservice teachers as certified teachers apply, in particular, video technology to the teaching and learning process.

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