I can't stop blogging about all this: the wealth of formats and powerful stories are so exciting! I could easily get lost for days at the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS)! I'm exploring and loving it.
When I think of legacy and history, I don’t think of mainstream social studies textbooks. Growing up and studying on two continents teaches you quickly that one country’s version of events can be very different from another. For example, as a school child, I never knew about the horrors committed by some French troops during the Algerian war or about the US Japanese Internment Camps. Those parts of history didn’t fit the immaculate honorable image these countries wanted to portray so they were swept under the rug. They might still be hidden if people had not told their story and refused to be silenced.
History should not just tell the story of the most powerful. It needs to include the stories that were silenced. Digital storytelling holds the power to give a voice to the voiceless. The intermixing of images, music, and the unique author’s voice creates a compelling vision of a person’s unique story. It draws you into real people’s lives. The empathy that comes from understanding their unique story helps us make sense of the world. It also helps us make deeper connections with different viewpoints and perspectives. To see what I mean, watch the Pralines video by Carol Burch Brown (below), or Breaking Free by Griffin Kinnard on the CDS website.
We, all of us, are the history writers of this generation. The collective sum of our stories becomes history. We still have a long way to go towards a truly equitable society. Why not use first account primary-source stories to get young people thinking about the reality of the world in order to figure out how to make it better for everyone? How powerful this could be, linking understanding, analysis, and social justice through service learning!
I hope we will give younger children a voice through digital storytelling. Broken friendships, conflicts, intolerance, family crisis such as divorce or job loss deeply affect our children. To ignore their voice is to ignore the impact of those events on their lives.
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Isa, Wowzer did your reflections impact me! This week my brain has been on artist overload and your reflections expanded my insight and produced more questions. Thanks you. I appreciate following your blog.
ReplyDeleteI lost myself in the wonders of the CDS site as well. Amazing stuff. That's my next stop after dropping in on all you cohort bloggers :)
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, we are the history writers of this generation. I totally believe that. Because there won't be textbooks in those future social studies classes...there will audio files and community-created video content and first-person stories and more, and it will be our job, our students' jobs, to make sense of it (to not take any of it at face value but to explore where those pieces are coming from, the perspective of the author/creator, consider opposing views). Sounds like a great way to teach and learn!
Isa,
ReplyDeleteThe Praline video blew me away. At first I thought there might be a glitch because it was only voice, but I was patient and listened--using my aural modality.
Tonight I heard an atomic bomb survivor tell his story of August 6, 1945, as a twelve year old in Hiroshima. He used images from the Hirohima Peace Museum archives as backgrounds on a screen. Some were photos, other drawings by survivors. Their visual impact helped him tell his story to an audience which wasn't alive 64 years ago (most were 30 and under). Four years ago I listened to a hibakusha (survivor) from Nagasaki, who told her story with just words. The audience she spoke to was definitely 'over 30' and they were very receptive to just her voice and physical presence. I don't know if she would have been as effective with this audience. In the old days, they said "A picture is worth a 1,000 words." Today, a picture plus sound plus voice plus animation is worth 10,000 words, I guess.
Thank you for the great references and your reflections.
Thank you Isa and Debi for your thoughtful discussion about the power of digital storytelling as a form of history keeping. While it's late and I should be in bed, I'm glad to have viewed "Pralines" and read your words before heading to bed.
ReplyDeleteYour comments (yet again!) pushed my thinking into new directions.
ReplyDeleteDebi, I hadn't even thought about social studies books completely disappearing in the future. I can really see that happening. (So how will the three remaining US textbook publishers make money off us?...)
JoAnn, as usual, you deepen my thinking as well. Thank you for sharing such powerful examples. I wish I could have seen & heard those survivors. You linked my thinking to earlier thoughts I wrote about: how different generations respond to the digital world so differently. And you added the element of generational EXPECTATIONS when it comes to effective presentations (sort of like the way I sink into my chair these days if a speaker brings out an overhead...). You're right: a picture plus other multimodal elements IS worth 10,000 words!