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Showing posts with label Digital storytelling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Digital storytelling. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Digital Storytelling
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.
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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