Storytelling
The Challenge:
Record a podcast or series of podcasts featuring stories that are meaningful and illuminate an individual's or group's lived experiences.
We express our identities through "the stories we tell and how we tell them" (Mishler, 1999, p. 19). Recording podcasts in which we tell our stories or feature guests sharing their stories can shine a light on important lived experiences and social issues and illuminate course content in dynamic, relatable ways (Hatfield, 2018).
As an example, Gonzalez et al. (2021) founded the #PassTheMicYouth podcast and blog to share the stories and experiences of diverse youth, contributing to greater understanding of their experiences.
Sharing stories through podcasting can empower diverse students to find their voice and share their stories in a personal, authentic mode to reach a wider audience on the Internet - a space that bends to dominant norms and can silence the voices and stories of diverse others (Ito et al., 2020)
Students from Dr. Gierhart's Fall 2021 courses shared their stories of science education and participatory cultures that exemplify the possibilities of student storytelling through podcasting:
Hatfield, E. F, (2018). Narrative learning using podcasts in interpersonal communication. Communication Teacher, 32(4), 236-242.
Ito, M., Arum, R., Conley, D., Gutiérrez, K., Kirshner, B., Livingstone, S., Michalchik, V., Penuel, W., Peppler, K., Pinkard, N., Rhodes, J., Tekinbaş, K. S., Schor, J., Sefton-Green, J., & Watkins, S. C. (2020). The Connected Learning Research Network: Reflections on a decade of engaged scholarship. Connected Learning Alliance. https://clalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/CLRN_Report.pdf
Mishler, E. G. (1999). Storylines: Craftarists’ narratives of identity. Harvard University Press.