Stephen Harlow is a Learning Designer at Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato The University of Waikato, in Aotearoa New Zealand where he supports students and lecturers via Te Puna Ako - Centre for Tertiary Teaching and Learning (CeTTL). He's been introduced to digital storytelling in the early 2000s and has been using it since then for himself and in his teaching.
Digital storytelling is a wonderful method to use in portfolios to tell your learning story.
Connect with Stephen
Resources
Click through to the episode notes for the transcript.
Subscribe to the monthly newsletter about Mahara and portfolios.
Production information
Production: Catalyst IT
Host: Kristina Hoeppner
Artwork: Evonne Cheung
Music: The Mahara tune by Josh Woodward
Stephen Harlow is a Learning Designer at Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato The University of Waikato, in Aotearoa New Zealand where he supports students and lecturers via Te Puna Ako - Centre for Tertiary Teaching and Learning (CeTTL). He's been introduced to digital storytelling in the early 2000s and has been using it since then for himself and in his teaching.
Digital storytelling is a wonderful method to use in portfolios to tell your learning story.
Connect with Stephen
Resources
Click through to the episode notes for the transcript.
Subscribe to the monthly newsletter about Mahara and portfolios.
Production information
Production: Catalyst IT
Host: Kristina Hoeppner
Artwork: Evonne Cheung
Music: The Mahara tune by Josh Woodward
Kristina Hoeppner 00:05
Welcome to 'Create. Share. Engage.' This is the podcast about portfolios for learning and more for educators, learning designers, and managers keen on integrating portfolios with education and professional development practices. 'Create. Share. Engage.' is brought to you by the Mahara team at Catalyst IT. My name is Kristina Hoeppner.
Kristina Hoeppner 00:27
Today I'm speaking with Stephen Harlow, who is a Learning Designer at The Whare Wānanga o Waikato, The University of Waikato in Aotearoa New Zealand. Originally a high school chemistry teacher, Stephen has been involved with e:earning since the turn of the century in both the tertiary and the not for profit sector. During that time, he has developed an interest in the use of storytelling in education, which is going to be the focus of our conversation today. Kia ora, Stephen.
Stephen Harlow 00:56
Tēnā koe, Kristina.
Kristina Hoeppner 00:57
Stephen to get us started, can you tell us a bit more about yourself? What do you do at Waikato?
Stephen Harlow 01:04
I listened to Dr Helen Chen's podcast to get a feel for this and I know she mentioned doing an ego search and asking ChatGPT, so I thought I'd try that but it started hallucinating, very flattering, but blatant lies. So I'm not Dr Stephen Harlow and I work in the Computer Science Department at the University of Waikato. Actually, the real me works with academic staff at Te Puna Ako, the Centre for Tertiary Teaching and Learning at The University of Waikato, and I help staff with their teaching. It's a pretty broad job description. So in practice that could be giving feedback on teaching, facilitating workshops, or you know, assisting with Mahara or Moodle.
Kristina Hoeppner 01:44
That is quite the range of activities that you're having as learning designer at your university. And I know that you work very closely with another Stephen at Waikato, Stephen Bright, who is of course, mainly responsible for the Mahara implementation there, but how did you get involved in the portfolio world?
Stephen Harlow 02:06
My interest in portfolios really stems from my time as Flexible Learning Leader, and in fact, the other Stephen, Stephen Bright, he was also a Flexible Learning Leader. It's a small world, New Zealand. This programme, FLLiNZ (Flexible Learning Leaders in New Zealand) had its origins coincidentally, in the same pool of money that got Mahara started, the thing called the eLearning Capability Development Fund.
Stephen Harlow 02:30
I should mention here actually, a woman called Nola Campbell, who at that time, worked at The University of Waikato, and saw a great professional development scheme that was running in Australia and basically brought it to New Zealand and gave scholarships to lucky recipients, about a dozen us, I think the programme ran for two years. And so Stephen Bright was one, I was another, and there's then others from around New Zealand. But why I got interested in was storytelling. Through storytelling, I discovered the work of Helen Barrett, who's often - well self-described as the grandmother of ePortfolios. Very quickly I identified ePortfolios as context in which story played an important part. So yeah, that's how I got into ePortfolios, through storytelling.
Kristina Hoeppner 03:21
19 years later, you're still involved in them, which I think also shows that, while of course in - it was kind of the personal learning environments and starting of portfolio platforms, more importantly, in the mid 2000s when you had your scholarship, it is still very valid these many, many years later. So it's good to see that you're still working with it. So Stephen, why is that storytelling aspect, so important?
Stephen Harlow 03:50
Really, it's because we are homo narrans, you know, we are the storytelling humans. I've got to say, I wasn't always as convinced. I guess I should credit another colleague, Cheryl Brown, who was working at Wintec with me at the time that I got the FLLiNZ scholarship, she was really the one that turned me on to the power of storytelling. I remember I came across this quote by an American poet called Muriel Rukeyser, apologies if I pronounced that wrong, but the quote is, "The universe is made of stories, not of atoms." And I remember initially, being dismissive of that I thought, after all, I trained as a chemistry teacher, and I knew the universe was made of atoms. But, you know, it really got under my skin, and the more I thought about it over the years, the more I've really come to believe it.
Stephen Harlow 04:41
Of course, if we really are homo narrans, the storytelling humans, and we're made of stories, then our work is about choosing the stories that we want to represent us. I mean, Helen Chen talked about this in her podcast. And then to bring this back to portfolios, I guess, you know, in a way that's what a showcase portfolio is: it showcases the stories that you want to present to the world, and like Helen Chen said, portfolios allow you to tell the story, tell your story how you want to.
Kristina Hoeppner 05:14
You've been sceptical in the beginning, partly due to your chemistry teacher background, that storytelling is actually important. How do you teach it then to students that they also see the benefit in telling their learning story? How do you incorporate that into your learning design work?
Stephen Harlow 05:32
Good question. I had the most success using a process called digital storytelling. And again, that harks back to my FLLiNZ time, and Helen Barrett, again, was a big proponent of digital storytelling and using digital stories in portfolios to show the reflective aspects of learning. Digital storytelling, a bit like portfolios is a process. That process seems to be quite captivating for students, I don't know whether it's a mix of technology with the storytelling that makes it engaging.
Stephen Harlow 06:08
I guess I should describe what a digital story is. They're short form; only two or three minute multimedia pieces that combine photos, video, maybe music, and importantly, a narration in your own voice to tell usually a personal story. So this sort of first person narratives, and that concept of digital storytelling originated out of the Center for Digital Storytelling in America. A fellow called Joe Lambert was the co-creator of the genre.
Stephen Harlow 06:39
Creating these stories often with artefacts that are already in a portfolio, you're really I guess, surfacing that reflective element to tell the story of why you think those pieces of work are important. You know, otherwise, without the reflection, a portfolio is just a collection of stuff. So you want to be able to surface the reason that you think this is important, what it links to, and often that reflection comes in the form of a story. And I think it was Donald Schön that said, stories are the products of reflection. So that's how stories fit with portfolios, and also how you can use the naturally engaging aspects of digital storytelling to engage students into storytelling.
Stephen Harlow 07:28
And so I've done that with education students at the university; there, they're our big portfolio users. So I've had them create digital stories for their portfolios. I've also helped create digital stories in geography, although they didn't use them as part of a portfolio there. So they can also stand separately, but the feedback that you get, and a colleague, Elaine Bliss, who ran the digital storytelling programme in geography did some research, and the words, you know, keep coming back were 'this is a very engaging process'. Of course, the thing is, it's also quite a time consuming process. So you know, you need to think about embedding it in a programme carefully.
Kristina Hoeppner 08:11
How do you help your students then in that process? Do you then also, for example, teach them how to put the story together? How to create that story arc? Which tools they can use to record their audio, their video, or how to deal with images? So what are some of those practical things how you're helping your students?
Stephen Harlow 08:29
Yeah, all of those things. I mean, in a way digital storytelling is about digital literacy. You know, it's a skill set that you can learn, you learn how to crop images, record, audio, and audio is often the most important thing. If the audio in the story is off or it's crackling, it's very hard to listen to and take the story seriously. There are a lot of digital skills that can be taught as well. That's why this sort of activity works well planned across a programme. I remember, you know, Helen Chen actually said in her interview that planning cross programmes was challenging, and it sure is, but the rewards are worth it if you can organise different courses or papers to look at different aspects. And the same is true of portfolios. If you can plan those across a programme, than rather than just an isolation and one course that works much better.
Stephen Harlow 09:19
I guess, showing students examples, exemplars of digital stories, helps get them to understand what's going to be required of them. Of course, if you're doing it in the context of a portfolio, and they've already collected some artefacts and getting them to think about the stories that are embedded in those artefacts.
Stephen Harlow 09:41
A very successful digital storytelling programme ran out of Wales. As part of my FLLiNZ scholarship, I went and visited this 'Capture Wales' programme, and they developed their own take on digital storytelling because the original American programme has, you know, some sort of unique American cultural aspects that don't always translate perfectly across cultures. What they've done in Wales was developed this idea of a shoebox story. And so what people would do, they come to a workshop, and I should say that the digital storytelling process is very much a workshopped process: you do it with others. So you're sharing stories, you're getting feedback on other people's stories, you're honing your story, and then finally, you're recording this media piece.
Stephen Harlow 10:24
What they did in Wales was from the BBC, BBC Wales did grab a Ford Transit van and throw a whole lot of iBooks in the back, remember, this is 2004. And they drive out into the valleys and they go to a community centre, and they'd ask people to bring along shoe boxes with a bunch of items that, you know, had particular meaning to them. They'd take the two or three items out of the shoe box and tell a story about those items. That might have been a photo, perhaps it was a stuffed toy, whatever, but they tell what they called a shoebox story. So it's sort of framed the size of the story. And if you think of, you know, portfolios are not too far removed from a box with, you know, items in it, you can pick out some of those items and tell a story about them.
Kristina Hoeppner 11:12
That's sometimes a metaphor we actually also use in the portfolio work that kind of throughout the semester or so you collect a lot of things, you put them into the shoebox, be it an actual one or more metaphorical one, and a virtual one. And then for the portfolio once you have all your evidence, you pick the things that are of most importance for you for what you want to showcase because you never ever show somebody the entire shoebox. You always only pick a few things out of that one to tell your story.
Kristina Hoeppner 11:44
In Wales, they adopted the overall idea of digital storytelling to their regional, local context. Have you done something similar in our context here in Aotearoa? Are there certain things that you also incorporate in your teaching, taking Māori principle into account or also Pacific ideas of storytelling?
Stephen Harlow 12:08
You know, I think we're all going back to that homo narrans idea, we're all storytellers, regardless of culture, that's one cross cultural similarity. And I haven't worked in Māori or Pacifika communities doing the sort of digital storytelling work. I have worked with Cheryl Brown, actually, with refugee communities. And so there we worked, help them tell stories of their homelands, you know, trying to make them feel a bit more comfortable arriving in New Zealand. And what you did notice was the humanity of the stories they told. Everybody was able to connect with everybody else's story because the stories were human.
Stephen Harlow 12:50
One woman told a story about her garden, that was her garden back in China, and she wanted to have a similar Garden in New Zealand, you know, people could identify with gardening, it's a very human thing to do. Another man told a story about kimchi, and how his kimchi was the best kimchi, and people relate to food no matter what culture. I think the beauty of storytelling is, it is inherently cross cultural.
Kristina Hoeppner 13:15
Your students are doing the storytelling, you are the learning designer in the equation, how do the lecturers take on the idea of storytelling? Do they then maybe also tell their own stories as part of the whakawhanaungatanga, to building relationships with their students?
Stephen Harlow 13:34
In all the cases where I've worked, the lecturer has created a story as well. And I think that's important. You are sharing some quite personal stories. So in that workshop environment where you do a thing called a story circle, so everybody sits in a circle and shares their early draft of a story, and these stories are short, remember, they're only two or three minutes. In some ways, the constraints of the form, you know, force you to be creative, force us to show and tell rather than just tell, tell, tell.
Stephen Harlow 14:05
So yes, I think it's important that the lecturer joins in in that process. That's where it's sometimes helpful to have an external facilitator come in and facilitate that story circle process. In the cases I've been involved with, the lecturer has also wanted to tell their story because we all want to tell stories and be listened to, don't we? In the education case, that was the story of why did you want to become a teacher? And often that's part of anybody's teaching philosophy. So you know, it's a very central part to you as a teacher, why is this profession important to you?
Kristina Hoeppner 14:42
Having done digital storytelling now for close to 20 years, Stephen, you must have seen heaps and heaps of stories. Have you seen any changes to how the learners tell their stories and of course, the tools would have changed that that they've been using over the years because technology has involved, but has also something changed kind of in the way that stories are being told or what people are sharing? Are they sharing more personal things? Are they sharing fewer personal things? What have you seen as part of your research and then also using the method with students of many different ages and also study programmes and also in your NGO work?
Stephen Harlow 15:21
I don't think the stories have changed that much. Especially, I guess, if you're drawing on artefacts from a portfolio. That portfolio is a showcase of your work in a particular area, they can tend to be similar stories. What I have noticed, and you already mentioned this, is the technology has become so much easier to use. So for instance, when I did the digital storytelling train the trainers workshop in Ukiah, north of San Francisco, with Helen Barrett, back in 2005, we all had MacBooks that were given to us to use, they had Adobe Premiere on them, you know, that was pretty heavy duty video editing software. iMovie was only just coming out, and that was, you know, considered a bit easier to use. To record the audio, you needed a very expensive USB audio interface and a mixer. You know, these sorts of tools were not only expensive, but they were reasonably difficult to use. And you got to remember this digital storytelling workshop was three days, and they were teaching basically entry level Adobe Premiere. So not only have you got the emotion of the story that you're trying to tell, but you've got the emotion of dealing with the jolly technology.
Stephen Harlow 16:39
What's changed is the tools we have available to do this. I remember when I saw Daniel Meadows, who was the leader of the BBC Wales digital storytelling initiative, when I interviewed him, he said to me, did I remember the BBC Micro, because you know, he worked at the BBC. You know, I'm a bit of an old computer nerd, and of course, I remember the BBC Micro. I always wanted it. It was one of the first, you know, personal computers as a kid you could have in your home, but they were really expensive. The BBC Micro was a computer that was commissioned by the BBC for a digital literacy programme that they ran. So I remember that he said, you know, 'what the BBC Micro did for computer literacy in Britain, I want a device that will do that for storytelling, digital storytelling in Britain.' He didn't know what that device would look like. I think he probably thought it was an iBook at the time.
Stephen Harlow 17:31
You know, I would argue that Daniel Meadows has got his device now. We've all got those devices in our pockets. What you can do with a phone is really quite remarkable. It's transformed digital storytelling from, you know, what would take days to accomplish in Adobe Premiere and a sort of semi professional audio mixing desk, you can do on your phone in a matter of minutes. You can take not just photos, but you can take video, you can use free software on your phone, and you can do quite advanced editing on a tiny screen, admittedly, the same sort of Ken Burns effect that makes a still photo come to life, all of that stuff that we were doing with Adobe Premiere 20 years ago, you can do with a phone. That has to be the big change. So yeah, Daniel Meadows has got his digital storytelling BBC machine now. It's a cell phone.
Kristina Hoeppner 18:29
I had to look up, of course, the BBC Micro and Wikipedia tells me that its introductory price was 235 pounds for Model A. and 335 for the Model B in 1981. It doesn't really seem to be having a big screen because it just looks to be having a keyboard.
Stephen Harlow 18:49
Yeah, I think you've plugged it into your television.
Kristina Hoeppner 18:52
Stephen, that is a fantastic story, just kind of going back to the roots, looking at the technology, how it has changed, and also how it has facilitated then over the years, the storytelling made it easier so that the students can really focus on the story rather than it like you did learning the technology and needing to make sure that you just get the technology right, therefore taking mental capacity away from focusing on the storytelling and that because the devices are smaller, I find also you can forget about them a bit more easily.
Stephen Harlow 19:23
The other thing that's changed hugely is the ability for us to listen or, I guess, watch stories. You know, back in 2005, I'm not even sure if YouTube was a thing. If it was it was only, you know, in its infancy. You went home with the story that you'd produced on a DVD. So you know now we can watch these stories, send them easily. It's a different game entirely.
Kristina Hoeppner 19:50
Look at that. YouTube started in 2005.
Stephen Harlow 19:53
This is a nostalgia podcast.
Kristina Hoeppner 19:55
That, Stephen, really that is I find also part of the podcasts that we are capturing the history of what we are doing in portfolios, what we are doing in the related fields because of course, that is very important to realise where we are at today, where we might want to go, and also where we are coming from to see then what we might be able to do in the future. So I really appreciate you taking us down the memory lane and also the history lane, giving us a little history lesson on digital storytelling, the tools being used, and how everything kind of started, also showing us a couple of the projects that you've been involved in, that you've researched, and where you started. So thank you for that.
Kristina Hoeppner 20:36
You are using storytelling with your students at The University of Waikato, if we're kind of coming back to the portfolio side briefly. How are students taking on that part that they are telling their stories, that they are keeping a portfolio as part of their classes? Is that commonplace now for the education students because you had mentioned earlier that it's always good to if it were part of an entire programme, rather than just being used as a point solution?
Stephen Harlow 21:04
I wouldn't say that it's widely adopted. Certainly the education students are our biggest users of portfolios. And you know, Stephen Bright is the one that works most with them. I've helped some students with portfolios and embedding digital stories, but it still very much relies on the lecture tanking a punt on the idea, or they will see for whatever reason it is an attractive proposition for them. It's certainly not widespread. I hope now that actually at Waikato University, we're training nurses, of course, they have a big professional portfolio requirement, I'm hoping that perhaps it'll be a growing area, and there'll be more use of portfolios and storytelling there.
Stephen Harlow 21:48
Another area that once was limited to science and management, really, that's where I came up studying chemistry, it was a programme called the BScTech where you did what was called cooperative learning. So you did workplace learning, that's now known as work integrated learning, or WIL, and every Waikato student has to do a WIL paper in their degree. And I think there's huge potential there for portfolios and, you know, for telling stories, because like the teachers are telling the story of why they want to be a teacher, there's potential for students to tell the story of their professional identity, that sort of stuff that Helen Chen was talking about, you know, why do I want to be a chemist?
Stephen Harlow 22:28
Actually, I probably work as much with staff in terms of developing portfolios. That's been a growing area over the years as teaching portfolios, often for either advancement or awards has become a much bigger thing. Actually, I can tell a story about that again, another nostalgic story. Back in 2008, I helped a Wintec lecturer, a woman by the name of Julia Bruce, develop her portfolio for the Ako Aotearoa Excellence in Tertiary Teaching Awards. And of course, I was fresh back from Ukiah, where I learned to teach people how to create digital stories. So by heck, I was going to help Julia produce a digital story for her portfolio. So we did. Julia turned out to win an award. And of course, I think it's definitely the digital story that did it, but actually Julia's amazing teaching. But what was interesting was the next year, Ako Aotearoa decided not to allow, what did they call it 'digital supplementary material' or something because they felt that it didn't contribute to the overall value of the portfolio. Who knows why they decided to change it. But I like to think it's because, you know, they thought it gave Julia an unfair advantage because she was using the power of storytelling. I should say that shortly thereafter, they actually changed the rules back, you can use digital stories or supplementary digital information with your teaching portfolios now.
Kristina Hoeppner 23:54
Having used portfolios for such a long time, using them also with digital storytelling, is there though anything in the portfolio that you wish you would be able to do that you haven't been able to do just yet?
Stephen Harlow 24:09
Actually, the most frustrating thing for me is probably being able to move them around more easily. And that really just speaks to a problem we've got at the moment at the university because we use Mahara and we use Google Sites to create portfolios. And the university has decided that they don't want to use Google services any more, and so we've got all these students that are going to lose access to their Google Site. And I don't know if you've ever tried to move a website or a portfolio out of a Google site, but it's very difficult. There's no Leap2A [export] for Google Sites.
Stephen Harlow 24:42
So one thing I would like to be able to do with portfolios is move them around more easily. It speaks to what Helen was talking about when she was talking about longevity of portfolios. When I first met Helen Barrett, actually it was at a ePortfolio conference in Melbourne in 2004. And there was this guy Serge Ravet.
Kristina Hoeppner 25:01
Yep, from ePIC.
Stephen Harlow 25:03
Yeah, yeah. And he was saying how in Wales, every citizen would have a portfolio, and I thought, wow, every citizen would have a portfolio. I think it was a bit like New Zealand, we could do the same. And then I thought of this Capture Wales, I thought, in Wales, every citizen has got a portfolio, and they've got this bunch of people in the BBC that are helping tell stories, Wales is such a cool place. So I knew I had to go and visit. But coming back to the idea of longevity, I think Serge wanted every European to have a portfolio. I lost track of those sort of initiatives. But really, we need something like that. So there's no need to move your portfolio.
Stephen Harlow 25:40
I'm a big fan of the folks at the University of Mary Washington, you know, their Digital Storytelling 106, DS106 course, and their Reclaim hosting that sort of spawned out of some of those ideas where everybody should have a Domain of One's Own. We talk about digital literacy, those are the real digital literacy tools, having your own domain and learning how to use a cPanel to manage software in your virtual private server or whatever.
Kristina Hoeppner 26:08
Yeah, I guess that's the other side. So that on the one side, we have the centralised portfolio that can go for the entire citizenry of a country. In New Zealand, we do have it for the school students with MyPortfolio.school.nz where the students and teachers can stay on one Mahara site for the entire school career. And then on the other side, you have a Domain of One's Own. That of course, it's the other end where everybody can decide where they want to have their portfolio or their domain, their content, and therefore do need more technical skills in order to achieve that because they of course, comes to server maintenance or site maintenance, which wouldn't be the case when an institution or an entire country ideally decides 'Yes, we are providing that space' so that you can focus on that content and not have to worry about the technology so much.
Kristina Hoeppner 26:55
So now coming to the end of our nostalgia session today, Stephen, which has been fantastic because there you're showing us really where we started with the personal learning environments, digital storytelling, where we're at today, and what we could do in the future. Three short questions then for you. Which words or actually you had requested in your Macedon toot to probably rather use short phrases instead of words. So which words or short phrases do you use to describe portfolio work?
Stephen Harlow 27:27
Of course, I have to say story, story, story. I guess, you know, that gets back to your wonderful word clouds. I'd look at them really carefully, you know, the tiniest little word I was looking for story, I couldn't see it there. I thought, goodness, portfolios are all about stories. And then a couple of weeks ago, Helen's come on your podcast, and she's stolen my thunder, really, because she was talking heaps about stories. So that was wonderful. But seriously, though, I guess the three words that I use when I'm talking to people is you know, the collect, select, reflect. A portfolio is a purposeful collection of things, and unless there's reflection on them, then it's not really a portfolio. It's just a collection. So yeah, collect, select, reflect is what I'd really say.
Kristina Hoeppner 28:13
I think though, I'll put 'story, story, story' in there as well.
Stephen Harlow 28:16
Oh good.
Kristina Hoeppner 28:17
... so that we do get more of those higher in the word cloud.
Stephen Harlow 28:20
I remember in the word cloud, I need to see story much bigger because I've got glasses these days.
Kristina Hoeppner 28:25
We'll make sure to include that for sure. What tip do you have for learning designers or lecturers who create portfolio activities?
Stephen Harlow 28:34
I think be clear about your rationale, you know, your purpose. Helen Barrett was very keen on a couple of early portfolio writers, researchers from the last century, Leon and Pearl Paulson, I think, anyway, they talked about a phrase I used before a portfolio as being a purposeful collection. And I think the purpose is really important. And actually, Stephen Bright is another person that really hammers home the importance of purpose: Why are you doing this? And I guess, also referring back to your learning outcomes. It's kind of generic teaching and learning advice. But if you're clear what your purpose is, then it limits the type of content that finds its way into the portfolio and offers a guide to students.
Kristina Hoeppner 29:19
So what advice would you have for portfolio authors who are on the receiving end?
Stephen Harlow 29:24
I was in that case, I'd have to say, tell your story. This might be a bit controversial, I'd also say don't be afraid to fail, or at least, you know, what I mean by that is show some failure. Because you know, these days, we carefully curate our social media profiles to show off our best lives. But actually, if you want people to take notice, then you know, a little crisis is not a bad thing, as long as you try and in the end. In the context of say, teaching portfolios, like you know, Julia Bruce's portfolio, I don't think there's anything wrong with her warts and all approach, you know?
Stephen Harlow 29:58
Include some of the things that didn't work so well but also include the resolution, how you resolved that problem, because it you know, shows you as being resilient, you know, you're gritty. That stuff's all grift, you know, for the reflective mill and people want to see character transformation, don't they? That's what a good story is all about. They don't want and then and then and then and then they want a crisis and how did you overcome that crisis? And how did it change you? At its heart, you know, character transformation is what a good memorable story is all about.
Stephen Harlow 30:29
Have you seen the movie 'About a boy'?
Kristina Hoeppner 30:31
Yes.
Stephen Harlow 30:32
That's with Hugh Grant. That's a great example that pops into my head when you think about character development because Hugh Grant's character goes from this self centred, cynical, bachelor to this, you know, selfless, sensitive guy all in 90 minutes. Now, you have to give up watching if you haven't seen it. Again, it's a bit of a nostalgia movie. I don't know when that was produced, but might have been the 90s as well.
Kristina Hoeppner 30:56
It's definitely the story. I mean, that's that's why storytelling, kind of there's a storytelling arc that you have the
Stephen Harlow 31:03
crisis, climax, resolution.
Kristina Hoeppner 31:06
We have all of that in our stories. And that's I guess, also where in a way the reflective frameworks come in, even if you're just looking at the simply phrased one of what, so what, now what? What has happened? So what does that actually mean to you? And now what, what have you learned out of that? What do you take with your from it?
Stephen Harlow 31:26
Yeah, exactly. That's what's the transformation. That's, I think, what Donald Schön's getting to when he's saying that stories are the product of reflection, you know, it's that transformation, that storytelling arc you've moved, and hopefully for the better.
Kristina Hoeppner 31:41
Thank you so much, Stephen, for taking us down not just memory lane, but also teaching us a bit about digital storytelling and the importance of it, and why we should all be engaging with it. So I hope that some people will be taking a look at it more closely and seeing how they can put some of their learning evidence into a digital story. So thank you so much for the chat today.
Stephen Harlow 32:05
You're most welcome, Kristina. It's been fun.
Kristina Hoeppner 32:08
Now over to our listeners. What do you want to try in your own portfolio practice? This was 'Create. Share. Engage.' with Stephen Harlow. Head to our website podcast.mahara.org where you can find links and the transcript for this episode.
Kristina Hoeppner 32:25
This podcast is produced by Catalyst IT, and I'm your host Kristina Hoeppner, Project Lead and Product Manager for the portfolio platform Mahara. Our next episode will air in two weeks. I hope you'll listen again and to tell a colleague about it so they can subscribe. Until then, create, share, and engage.