Week 2 The Purpose of Digital Storytelling and Our Project's Place in it.

    What are the things I am looking to explore in digital storytelling? The tertiary things that schools were designed to teach our students. A school is not only a place to impart knowledge onto the next generation, it is also where we shape the future citizens of the country by teaching them things like manners, acceptable social behavior and interactions, morals and ethics that should bolster what they are learning at home. My digital storytelling is geared for early educational reading instruction. The language will be designed to accommodate educators teaching the early steps of reading, and in each story, like Aesops Fables or even fairy stories by the Brothers Grimm, to teach a lesson. With the evolution of humanity and society the stories we tell may need to evolve. 

    The story Inequality offers a very interesting question right off the bat. How would you choose to distribute the wealth of the top 10% and the other 90%. I chose for 10% to stay with the 10% and to distribute the remaining 90% to the bottom 90%. Just trying to be fair. Although it would be fun to leave them with nothing and let them figure out how the rest of us do it from the bottom. The question of how the funds are actually distributed I said 95% to the top and 5% to the bottom. I was corrected that 52% goes to the bottom and 48% goes to the top. That is still disproportionately distributed. According to the choices it tells me my annual income should be six figures but the reality while I finish my masters degree is only 1/4 of that and has consistently been so since completing my undergraduate degree. When I changed it to having only completed my undergraduate degree it produced an annual income almost three times my current annual income. It then outlines how I relate to women who earn 28 thousand less annually and 22 thousand less than a black man within my age group. It then illustrates what exactly has been keeping wages down in regards to wages and productivity which shows that I should, from the basic information provided, should be making an additional 24 thousand dollars annually. It breaks down wages (for the 1% whose profits increased 356% while productivity has maintained its increase 254% and typical worker compensation has only increased 113% between 1948 through 2011). It then posits the question of how to fix the income inequality issue with options about trade, tax fairness, financial regulation, labor standards, and full employment and options to dispel the myths of mobility, pampering the rich, and education. It also provides an option to post to Twitter (I refuse to call it X) to tell someone about it either from the perspective of one who is mad about it or one who denies its a problem at all. 

The layout and navigation are simple enough and easy to move through. It cites its sources throughout the process which is vital because of the amounts of disinformation that is prevalent all over the internet. It offers an option for users to voice how they feel about the inequality question. Some of the information may be out of date as it shows the Economic Policy Institute was created in 2013 during the Obama administration and may not reflect current incomes and policies after the first Trump term, the Biden term, and what we are experiencing during the second Trump term. The illustrations are simple and abstracted but pleasant to the eye. The flow is smooth and the animations really add value to the site visually. The whole experience is interactive and you must participate to get through it. Like I said the income numbers do not reflect the realities of rural Oklahoma, or even metropolitan Oklahoma. The annual incomes are much much higher than what is achievable here. 

    This would be a very helpful tool in a high school level government or civics course. This would be something presented to students between the ages of 14 and 17 years of age, most likely presented in the latter years of high school for students either embarking on continuing their education through college or moving into the world as working adults or tradesmen. The individuals I currently deal with this would be very much like the adults in Charlie Brown to them, and my goal of becoming an early education teacher this would be far too advanced for them to wrap their little heads around. This would meet 2.1.a for educators in a college preparatory class in illustrating the importance of continuing education and its value in relation to annual incomes post college. For it to meet 2.1.c the educator would have to bring updated and current information supplementarily for the figures to reflect current income inequality figures. It would allow teachers to advocate for access to technology and information that should be available to all students to improve their lives post graduation 2.2.b. For an educator teaching website building, or educational website creation this would be a very good tool to use in class 2.2.c. Using this specific story could teach students about how income inequality drives human behaviors in a sociological aspect and can be used as an example for collaborative projects 2.4.a. 2.4.b would only have educators learning with their students on the first run because to develop educational content they would be learning and become familiar with the content contained within. But it could be an invaluable tool to design authentic learning activities, using this as a jumping off point for exploring other facets of inequalities in society, and how technologies can affect lives on micro and macro levels 2.5.b while pushing them to engage in and interact with innovative learning environments 2.5.c. Educators can use it to model and nurture creativity 2.6.d, and can be a tool for developing alternative methods of assessment 2.7.a or can be used to create a variety of different assessments 2.7.b. (International Society for Technology in Education, 2024).

    According to Ohler it is story first, digital second. In the case of Inequality Is, it is very much digital first and the story comes through as more of a choose your own adventure presentation of economic information that will vary depending on your own socioeconomic lot in life depending on race, age, level of education and the information presented may or may not reflect the reality you exist within. It presents a historical chronology between the years of 1948 and 2011 and if there is a character then the character is you as you journey through the content. Any character representation within are nameless. Just figures that represent a human but nothing more is applied to them. The only semblance of characters within the story are generalized groups being the 10% at the top and the 90% beneath them. It is really up to the one who is interacting with the story to fill in the narrative gaps. 

    My story map is simply an introduction. It is the story about Miss Teacher (which I may actually name her or just leave her as a generic character). Her function is very much the adult voice to guide children. She is the first human teacher to come from the village down below to teach at Hemlock Elementary. It is here that she meets her students for the very first time. A mummy who identifies as a girl named Molly, a jewish werewolf named Sammy, a gilled creature named George and so on with each student having their own stories to tell. Like I say this is introductory, at some point after I develop the characters further they will be telling stories to teach kids about other tertiary educational goals I would have like manners, ethics, how to accept our differences, how to not discriminate, etc. And in the process of teaching these mini lessons we are also working on building literacy skills. I have already begun sketching out the character models which will all be very similar and the design for Miss Teacher is inspired by Nanny from the Muppet Babies where Nanny is only visible from about the waist down and you never see her face. I have outlined the students backstory for their introductions and I do not want to spoil them by spilling the beans completely in this post. 

Sources:

International Society for Technology in Education. (2024, April 2). ISTE standards: For educators. ISTE. https://iste.org/standards/educators

Lambert, J. (2010). Digital storytelling cookbook : January 2010. Digital Diner Press.

‌storyconcepts. (2025). Blogspot.com. http://storyconcepts.blogspot.com

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