Digital Story Final Draft

Thanks for watching - I hope you enjoy it!

Digital Story Rough Draft

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-J7Spa6EJM&feature=youtu.be

This is definitely a rough draft, please bear with me. My story still needs more supporting images (there is a lot of black screen with voice-over that will change) and music. I need to still cut about 30 seconds. I plan to re-record some of the narration and tweak a couple things, but I think its in a good place for some feedback. I am open to any suggestions.

Thanks so much.

Digital Story Outline

I focused on the narrative outline and just wrote notes about what images I wanted because I didn't want to spend too much time on it (I tend to get immersed in that part) -this week I will work more on collecting and creating the images I want.

Digital Story Outline

I'm interested in feedback, please let me know if you have any! Thanks!

Double Entry Journal 12

Chapter 4: Dreams and Nightmares

1. How can documentary video production help prevent the underdevelopment of urban youth minds and spirits?

 Documentary video production allows the student to develop critical thinking skills by exploring a subject in that has a personal or community relevance to it.

2. What school-based literacies does documentary video production help to develop?

Documentary video production can help develop reading & writing literacies, as well as research-based literacies. Reading and research are developed through learning more about a subject, which is needed in order to guide a project and write interview questions and narration that is informed. Writing literacies are also developed through the brainstorming and project development (pr-production) phase of a video documentary process. It is also developed in the interviewing phase (developing questions). In the logging phase of a video documentary, the students must also engage their critical thinking skills to differentiate useful information from non-useful information, and must start developing a mental outline for there final pieces.

3. What 21st century skills does documentary video production help to develop? Provide concrete examples from the chapter. Use this Wikipedia article  to help you answer this questions.  

Critical thinking: when logging the footage of the Dreams project, the students had to decide what was relevant to write down in their logs and what wasn't relevant. Another example - When interviewing subjects, students must decide what is relevant to ask, and makes sense in order to guide their final video.

Creativity and Innovation: Majandra pulling out the video camera and interviewing her father - innovative. The editing process is a creative example. The brainstorming process - the students journaling what to include in their video - an example of the creative process.

Communication & Collaboration: Majandra & Jonathan's talk in the principal's office. Majandra communicated with Jonathan, in order to get him to understand why the topic of Teen Suicide was important. This resulted in Jonathan's collaboration on the project.

Information Literacy: research into the issue of Teen Suicide - evidenced by Julius' question to the boy whose friend committed suicide, asking what his take on more boys committing suicide instead of girls.

Media Literacy: the students had to learn that the media often looks like they are interviewing "on the fly," but in actuality, the questions the media asks are usually preplanned and only made to look spontaneous.

Career & Life skills: Majandra learned interviewing skills and specialized in that area because she wanted to go into Journalism. Jonathan learned flexibility in working on a topic that wasn't his initial choice. Julius learned how to talk to people and listen to them without inserting his own viewpoint.

4. Would you support a documentary video production in school or after-school program in your community? Why or Why not?

Yes, absolutely - and I'd love to be part of it! I have seen documentary video production work by making students think deeper about the issues that influence themselves and their communities. I have also seen them come out of a workshop with a better sense of collaboration and communication, and a deeper respect for hard work and research based inquiry.

Elements of a Digitial Story

Element #1: Know your Audience
I think the audience for both video's was the students & possibly parents - to inform them of something & to reinforce the learning by making a video of the results and process.  In the second example, I like the use of text because, for me, I understand things better if I read them rather than if it was told to me. I would have enjoyed hearing more student voices, however, and probably would have added that if I was doing it - like the first example did.

For my story, I plan to use first person narrative. I'd like my audience to be my fellow students, maybe my family (particularly my children).

Element #2: Dramatic Question

Although the first example video 's ending was very cute (with the videomakers waving & saying their name into the camera), I didn't think it did a great job answering the dramatic question "are we making Guam Ugly." I thought it could be better if it showed more places with trash around it (what they showed look just like they went to one place - although this could be wrong).

I love the idea of the surprising ending that makes sense within context of my story. I'm thinking of how I could incorporate that into my story. I'm expecting my dramatic question to be something around culture identity..... I was 20 years old before I realized what culture was.

Element #3: Emotional content
The first example uses depression and feeling of loneliness as its emotional content. The second example uses a mother's wish to learn about her culture in order to pass it on to her children... the universal feeling of inter-generational connection is the emotional content that hooks the viewer. The third example asks "what is a stranger" and it is resolved in a surprising way - strangers look like regular people  not the scary monsters the children drew pictures of... they can even look like the teacher.

Element #4: The gift of your voice
Wow - love the first example. The expression the woman had on her face when she talked about licking salt was wonderful. I love the "mountain" people and the "ocean" people content - something wonderful about hearing that from her voice.
Example two included the children reading their story & singing the background music which really made it feel like a child-directed story vs. if an adult would have read it. The written word also gave the feeling of the video being more like a story-book.... and interesting choice.

Element #5: The soundtrack
I can see using old-time, traditional, music as a soundtrack to my digital story....

Element #6: Economy
What a great idea - to create story's from pictures and record them into movies - love it. For the most part, the images stayed on the screen just long enough and followed the story nicely.

Element #7: Pacing
The basketball team (and the teachers) made me laugh! I would have liked some of the photos towards the end paced faster.... but my ultimate criticism is that - I want to see more!!!

Week 11 - Double Entry Journal

1. What are your concerns about teaching young people to make videos about social problems?
A few concerns: first, that adults (teachers, administrators) influence what is said or addressed about that social problem. two, that the depth of understanding about the social problem isn't deep enough. three, the young people don't contribute enough solutions to the problems - and it can come off sometimes like they are just complaining without being proactive about a solution.

Questions about Chapter 2:

1. Name a social issue specific to the Appalachian region that you think young people in your community would or should address. 

 Environmental concerns:I think it would be really interesting to explore the difference between mountain top removal and underground mining, and how those differences (or lack of distinction between the two) impact economics, political dynamics and environmental concerns. I'd also be interested in seeing young people's perspectives on climate change and coal mining - particularly those who benefit economically from coal mining.

 

2. Find an online resource you might use to scaffold community-based  video production process.

I'm not sure what is meant by "scaffold" in this context, but I found a website with some curriculum available:  http://justthink.org/curriculum/     (The Hidden Heroes curriculum is really good - I've used a version of it in a past workshop).

3. Choose one of the following perspectives; teacher, parent, or community member. From your chosen perspective, would you be supportive of a school program that engaged students in community-based video production? Why or Why not?

As a parent, I would absolutely support a school program that engages students in community-based video production. For one, it would be important for me to know that my child is being exposed to a larger community beyond just the school. It is also important for me to know that my child is being taught how to be a proactive producer of media (and not just a spectator). I would also support this within the school because I believe that video production is a form of literacy that can deepen my child's cognitive abilities and depth of knowledge.

 

Quote:

 

"Some students claim to distrust information reported by any students - including the electronic and print news media - other than someone in their neighborhood. Their problem is not knowing how to gather and make sense of information is therefore compounded by their difficulty in knowing how to decide what and what not to believe. And second, they often voice a deep sense of hopelessness and pessimism that any amount of learning or community involvement could make a difference in the social conditions that shape their lives." (Goodman, 2003)

My attention was thoroughly captured while reading Chapter two of this book. I enjoyed reading about the process of making Young Gunz, and I enjoyed Mr. Goodman's analysis of the young filmmakers' learning process. However, when I got to this passage, I realized I might as well be reading about the adult students in my class. I underlined many other passages in this chapter that related to them as well, but this was the first. I was especially drawn to the "hopelessness and pessimism" part because with the election coming up, I have been talking a lot about the electoral process and was surprised to hear not one of them was planning to vote.

The difficulty in knowing how to decide what and what not to believe also rang true. Later in the Chapter Mr. Goodman writes that his students assess the reliability of street information  based on their personal connection to the source. This seems to ring true for the lower income rural adult students I work with too. It is interesting to me, because the reliability of information is almost always linked back to the source of information, however the "personal connection" is tricky. I think of this in terms of the internet because computer literacy is something I teach. Part of this literacy is teaching students how to decipher if a website is reliable or not. Most of my students have a hard time figuring this part out - especially if they are unfamiliar with the website (which I guess could be seen as the "personal connection"). Personal connection can be tricky because although you trust that source, it might not be accurate. For example, Wikipedia is usually accurate, but can't be trusted to always be right and isn't an acceptable research website.

Additional Resource:

This is the place I used to work that does community-based video production with Appalachian youth. I haven't kept up with what they've been doing much in the last few years, but around the time I was there youth produced videos about prescription drug abuse, Appalachian music, living wages, stream quality, coal-mining, LGBT acceptance and dialects/accents of Appalachian people:

www.appalshop.org/ami

Source:

 Goodman, S. (2003). Teaching youth media: A critical guide to literacy, video production & social change. NY: Teachers College Press.

Week Ten - Activity 1

1. A positive event from my childhood:
My grandmother moved in with my family when I was 4 years old. She was much older than other grandmothers of children my age because she had my father when she was 35. My father was almost 30 when he had me, so that made her about 65. 65 now doesn't seem that old, but at 4 years old, 65 was ancient. She never wore hair-dye, so she looked like a grandmother. She also had a hard, but good, life. She worked at a lot of service jobs, and had Scoliosis bad, so she was always bent over which made her look like she had a hump on her back. When she married at 19, she was 5'7" but she had shrunk to about 4'10" by the time she died at the age of 88.

I remember she always cooked. My parents both worked, but she was home when we would get back from school. She would make us grilled cheese sandwiches. She loved to bake, and would make lots and lots of cookies during the holidays. Unfortunately, these cookies were old-world cookies with funny names and funny, adult tastes. She would make almond cookies and balish, strudels and potica. She was famous for her potica. Potica is a Hungarian nut-roll with walnuts and lots (and lots) of sugar. When I was a teenager and had an opportunity to go to Europe for a few weeks one summer, my grandmother and mother baked Potica's to sell and paid for my trip that way. I should have helped, said I would help, but didn't. I never really baked Potica's with my grandmother. It wasn't until after she died that I started baking Potica with my mother. It started as a sure-fire way to make extra cash during the holidays, one year we made enough to fly four people to Florida, but as I did it, and loved it, It turned into a way to honor my grandmother and, I hope, I hope, a way to show her my appreciation for always being there for me.

2. A negative event from my childhood:
I remember middle school being particularly traumatizing to me. I am the only girl among three brothers, as a child I was assertive, outspoken and bold. When I hit middle school, and puberty, things changed drastically. I NEVER spoke up in class or even raised my hand, I was shy and introverted. I had a small group of friends, but not the close knit group I had in elementary school. As far as a detail.... hmm, I remember being picked on a lot, although I don't really remember why - I imagine it was because I was an easy target because I didn't speak up.

3. A particular event that stands out from my teenage years:
When I got my driver's license. I couldn't wait to get it, I signed up for my temps as soon as I could, took my drivers ed class immediately and took the drivers test as soon as I was eligible. I remember the first time I got to drive by myself. It was a day or two after I passed my test and I drove my Mom somewhere to drop her off. One rule my parent's had when I was learning to drive was that the radio had to be off. I understood why, it was for my safety - to cut down on the distractions. I dropped her off and started the 15 minute drive home. I got about 5 minutes into the ride when it hit me that I was alone, the car was quiet and I had my drivers license! I turned on the radio, thank you very much, and loved the freedom - and defiance - of it!


4. A vivid/important memory from my adult years:
Driving into Kentucky for the first time. I was on my way to eastern Kentucky where I was to spend the next three months interning during my college years. I didn't know what to expect from the job, nor from the area. I didn't know anything about Eastern Kentucky or Appalachia... hell, I still pronounced it Apple-Aye-shon because that was how I was taught in school. The only thing I remembered about being taught about Appalachia in school was that it was a mountain range in the eastern U.S. That's it. Nothing about the rich culture and traditions. nothing about the streams and forests, nor about the coal that came from those mountains that powered our lights and what that meant to the people who lived in that region - for better and for worse.  I had no idea that the term "hillbilly" had multiple meanings and was largely embraced and celebrated. My only experience I had with hillbillies was my grandfather, who called himself one while he cussed and farted in public (much to my embarrassment).  I remember driving to eastern Kentucky, unsure of how to handle the winding, two lane, 55 mph roads, and unsure of what to expect. I remember embracing the idea of having no expectations. I started my work, scared but open to whatever happened.

This internship was supposed to be my required "cross-cultural" experience I needed to graduate. I at first thought - what a joke, kentucky is my "cross-cultural" experience? It was pretty early into the experience when I realized that I had no idea what culture even really, really meant until that time. I could clearly see how spanish culture differed from mine, for instance, but it wasn't until I experienced the subtle but strong difference in Appalachian vs. the northeastern middle American culture I came from, did I understand what culture was or how persuasive and encompassing it was.

5. A turning point in my life:
I guess I have to turn back to my Kentucky experience for this one. I always wanted to make movies as a kid, and I always thought I'd end up in New York or some other big city. I never in a million years dreamed that I would fall in love with the mountains. I was supposed to stay 3 months in Kentucky for my internship, I ended up staying 9 months that first stretch. I fell in love, both literally and figuratively, and ended up returning to Kentucky 9 months later to live and work. I married the mountain-raised man I fell for, had my first child in the mountains. Along the way I discovered a passion for education, having taught young Appalachians how to make media so they could offer an alternative view of their culture.  I realized that mainstream media was co-opting and exploited a true, but incomplete part of this culture for commercial gain and money.