In LS5633: The Art of Storytelling, Spring ’13 Texas Woman’s University graduate students will identify a personally-meaningful library or education value and create a digital story to advocate for it with specific library stakeholders.

Coteaching is central to my practice of school librarianship. In my experience, supported by research in the field, coteaching is the best strategy for making the greatest contribution to students’ learning and teachers’ teaching. Coplanning, coteaching, and coassessing lessons and units of instruction are essential activities of 21st-century school librarians. For card-carrying school librarian instructional partners, reaching out to classroom teachers and specialists requires on-going advocacy work.

For the storytelling class last spring, I created “Coteachers: Step Out of the Box,” an Animoto video targeted to classroom teachers and school librarians who may not have experienced the astounding benefits of coteaching. This spring I am asking grad students to draft their digital advocacy stories, use social networking and participatory culture tools to seek feedback from their target audience(s), revise and publish their stories, and reflect on the assignment.

So, I am seeking feedback from Building a Culture of Collaboration Blog readers as well as my Twitter followers and Facebook friends.

1. Do the photographs in the video communicate the benefits of coteaching to educators and students?
2. Do the design, images, and music reinforce the idea that “stepping out of the box” for effective and fun(!) coteaching is a worthwhile strategy?
3. Does the video capitalize on the meme “out of the box” as an expression that describes nonconformal, creative thinking?
4. Other ideas for improvement?

Please post your feedback here or email it to me at: jmoreillon@twu.edu

Thank you for making time to help me improve my digital advocacy story.

Sincerely,
Judi