Looking at Questions

What types of stories did the students produce?
First I had to adjust my own definition of “story.” Previous research supports the idea that African American kids might have different ideas about what a story is. So while European American Children participating in a similar study all produced what I would consider linear, traditional types of stories, the African American students’ productions were more varied. There were describing stories where the students described what they had created on the screen. There were more traditional stories that had the familiar beginning, middle and end sequence. One student consistently produced texts that didn’t separate his story from his need to validate the worth of his story for his future audience.

When I considered what types of stories the students produced, I do see the old English lit class organizer: man versus himself, man versus man, and man versus nature. Man versus nature is particularly a strong them across many of the stories. I connect this to religious upbringing, though I don’t know where and how to confirm that. As an African American I recognize that life is not a certain and humans are subject to all sorts of wicked twists of fate, like lightning strikes and dead ducks killed thoughtlessly in the street.

One thing I did notice was that there aren’t any pop culture references featured in any of the stories the students produced. Since this is a hallmark of Dyson’s work with this very demographic, I find this interesting. Perhaps the newness of the Technology, or even for these kids, the newness of free story writing didn’t allow them to get to that imaginative stage. Now there was one little guy, who has a very active fantasy life which this study seems to brought out for the first time in school. He did use his Yug-i-oh card to help him tell his story. That is, when he recorded his story, he would talk and then he’d change his voice, and the Yug-i-oh card would then “speak.” Later, he can be seen on the video of the Computer Author’s Chair time waving the card so that the camera could pick it up.

Perhaps his characters, and decisions about what he’d do with his stories came from his culture-inspired imagination. He was the most sophisticate storyteller; not that he had more in school experiences, but that he was just a natural storyteller those stories were rolling around in head (probably why he was so quiet in class as his teacher reports) only spilling out at home (his mother reported that sometimes he “surprised” her with his stories.)

Regardless, I find it interesting that in this format, pop culture was not present.


What meanings and purposes did the stories serve for the children?