{"id":18892,"date":"2018-08-15T10:01:46","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T14:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.macmillan.com\/community\/the-english-community\/bedford-bits\/blog\/2018\/08\/15\/what-s-the-story-in-your-data-stream"},"modified":"2018-08-15T10:01:46","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T14:01:46","slug":"whats-the-story-in-your-data-stream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/15\/whats-the-story-in-your-data-stream\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the Story in Your Data Stream?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This post was originally published on September 25, 2012.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Your average student has developed a significant collection of digital work. There are Facebook updates, Twitter posts, YouTube videos, and Flickr and Instagram photos. I\u2019ve been thinking about how to use this collection of artifacts since \u00a0Antero Garcia<\/span><\/a> \u00a0reminded me that there is a \u201chuge stream of student data to look for growth in.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[Photo: \u00a0<\/span>text message by sffoghorn, on Flickr<\/span><\/a>]<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What are positive ways to use all that data? I\u2019m not interesting in mining that data for indications of what strategies do or do not work. Instead, I\u2019d like students to find their growth and changes in that stream of data themselves. Happily, I\u2019ve found inspiration for an assignment that I think will do just that. I simply need to ask students to look for the stories in their data stream.<\/span><\/p>\n

Oddly, this idea came to me when I read a story in the \u00a0Georgia Southern<\/em>alumni magazine. I\u2019m not an alumnus of Georgia Southern, so I almost threw the paper into the recycling unopened. It only ended up in my mailbox because I have donated to the \u00a0<\/span>Graduate Research Network<\/span><\/a> \u00a0(GRN). Curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to skim it in case the GRN was mentioned inside.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, I found a story about Jessica Hines, a photography teacher at Georgia Southern. Hines searched through her own data stream to learn more about her brother Gary, a Vietnam War veteran who took his life. The story from the alumni magazine isn\u2019t online, but you can read more about Hines in My Brother\u2019s War: Professor Acclaimed for Images of War Experience.<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Two things caught my imagination from the piece. First, my eye tripped on the title, \u201cHines teaches students to tell \u00a0story of themselves<\/em> \u00a0through photography.\u201d The grammarian in me either wanted to add the word \u00a0the<\/em>, change \u00a0story \u00a0<\/em>to \u00a0stories<\/em>, or perhaps both. Still the idea of telling stories with photographs drew me in, since I\u2019ve been searching for multimodal assignments recently.<\/span><\/p>\n

My interest piqued, I read on and found my second inspiration. Hines talked about her teaching as an introduction to her own search to learn more about her brother:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI explain to my students that the camera is a device that, by pressing a button, shows them what they are interested in,\u201d explains Hines. \u201cThe potential for self-discovery is high if one pays attention.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What would happen, I wondered, if I sent students off to look through their data stream for their stories with the intention of learning more about themselves and their interests in the process? I knew I had found a positive way to use that \u201chuge stream of student data.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The assignment I have in mind asks students to look back through their data stream for recurring themes or topics and to compose a text about how their ideas have changed over time. I want them to consider questions like these:<\/span><\/p>\n