Digital Storytelling: Where Outreach, Local History & Technology Collide
Saturday, June 28th, 2008Everyone has a story. Being able to turn your story to something that can be shared with others enhances self worth and benefits the community overall. Their story lives on after they are gone. As libraries, we have the training and in some ways, duty to document and archive society’s culture and history. We have the ability to share this knowledge with others that are even outside of our communities through technology. Therefore, I was very excited to attend the PLA sponsored workshop yesterday.
California of the Past is implementing a really great video history program. The pilot libraries: Benicia, Covina, Hayward, Orange County, Sacramento, S. San Francisco. The goal is to capturing slices of people’s lives. What’s really cool is that many libraries or museums have oral histories that have been recorded. These can be paired with historical photographs to create a visual/interactive historical experience. They also have interviews of people that wish to share their stories. The recorded memories of California and local communities enable people to hear others personal experiences and find out what did the community look like, stories that address the recent past or distant past. It promotes intergenerational sharing,
engage aging baby boomers, encourage immigrants to California to share their memories, provide library staff with digital storytelling program skills and encourages library/community partnerships. We watched a number of amazing stories. All of them can be found on their website: digitalstorystation.com
How I See it - California Stories talked about the photography/journaling project that they have implemented for teens. It’s important for teens to know that an important community member enhance status of the library as a cultural place. California’s citizens of all ages and walks of life share their stories to capture a better understanding of what it is like to grow up in CA today.
It is being implemented in libraries and geared for afterschool/summer programming. It’s a packaged program that has a curriculum manual with activities, bibliography, resources, and is supported by the CA state library with equipment, training and a cash grant. Its focus is to utilize photography and writing. There is a method and thought to make this a learning experience using digital technology.
It engages youth to document their community through photographic documentation and writing. It is building a community of writers and photographers that share and communicate their discoveries to peers through exhibits and special events. It is important to keep kids connected to nature and their communities. They explore the area within a mile of the library which not only ties the teens to the community but the area around the library. They focus on the environment and everyday landscape of the community, photo skills, editing and revision of photos and text.
It’s desigined to give youth a feeling of belonging and an outlet for self expression. It (hopefully) improve people’s perception of youth in community and overall strengthens community ties.
I remember discussing something similar to this at my library. I can’t wait to do something like this and get videos up and running to. Something to consider is that it does take time. Overall, the videos from start to completion can take about 10 hours. That is the planning, filming and editing processes. Nonetheless, I’m very excited!
