Monday, June 18, 2012
The Pitfalls of Brainstorming
The first full day of the Reynolds Institute 2012 has come to a close and I already feel as if my brain could explode! There was so much information to take in. Starting with the shocking facts about how little Americans actually know about the 1st Amendment, discovering the value of story mapping and then moving into a hands-on activity giving me valuable - though simulated - reporting experience. Throughout all of this information, which will undoubtedly tie nicely into my journalism class come fall, there is one important fact from today that resounds in my brain.
Brainstorming.
For the past year my students have been brainstorming story ideas as one large group. Students would come with a few ideas jotted down on paper, but typically ideas thrown out would be "Baseball" or "We should do something about the janitors in our school." The ideas were broad. Typically, we would assign these stories and then come up with our angles later. Often times this would result in articles that did not seem to have a purpose at all. Baseball articles would cover several facts about the team. The janitors article would include a mass amount of random information about our janitors. The stories lacked focus. I knew this was a problem but had no idea how to help my students create more in-depth article topics.
The problem was brainstorming.
Our pitching sessions would take a long period of time, we would struggle to decide which articles to use and we would end up with unfocused articles. Obviously, brainstorming was not working and thanks to Steve Elliott I know why. Brainstorming does not force my students to think critically. It simply asks them to come up with ideas. Using story mapping, I can take our pitching sessions to the next level. Not only will my students come up with ideas but they can take their ideas and hone them into a more interesting and focused topic. Getting the opportunity to work with a small group to create our very own story mapping today proved to me the value of this activity. Starting with a topic of "Illegal Immigration" my group was able to produce at least 10 feasible, focused article ideas. The original topic was broad - very similar to the stories my students tend to pitch. Now, I have a way to push my students into deeper thinking. To leave you with the wise words of Steve Elliott "Reporting will suck unless the story idea is good."
Sarah Noah
Goshen High School
Goshen, Indiana
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Brainstorming was totally one of my ahha's today as well. I really like the story mapping concept that was brought up today instead and it will help those reluctant writers so much more.
ReplyDeleteHeather Jancoski
DeleteDesert Sands Middle School
Phoenix, AZ
The story-mapping activity was great and I really was able to see the value in getting a focused story from a broad topic. Like Heather said, it will definitely help those students that have a hard time coming up with an idea.
ReplyDeleteI will most likely be setting up an activity similar to ours today in the first few weeks of school. The goal to "train" my students to use this critical thinking on their own later in the year.
I really liked the story mapping activity too. I've verbally gone through a very basic version of this in the way I try to get the students to localize their stories, but seeing the map on paper is so much more powerful! I can easily see how a small group could collaborate like we did, and then pick their own focused topics from the results.
ReplyDeleteI agree this was a great idea and much better than my current 'brainstorming' structure - but I keep thinking it will need tweaking to work with HS students. They have so little background information in some cases. Making connections like we were able to will be a stretch. The visual element was really excellent.
ReplyDeleteI, too, brainstormed within a large group, basically the entire class. As a result, I was reaching for the advil after the bell rang. The stories, too, were often lacking in focus and the ideas were broad. After hearing about story mapping and pitch papers, my lightbulb went on and a weight was lifted (forgive the cliches).I autommatically posted to the newspaper blog about these ideas and I look forward to hearing the students' responses. I hope to create/see a template for the pitch paper and I intend to create one as well as a story map for my online article for here.
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