For this digital story critique, I selected a video from the University of Houston’s Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling site entitled “Birth of the Internet.” The author, Anita Vyas, tells a personal reflection on how the internet age affected her life. For this critique, I choose to judge the video on the following assessment traits (as established by Jason Ohler in his book Digital Storytelling in the Classroom):
- Research – In telling her personal story, Vyas ties into the evolution of the internet. She includes a number of photos of major scientific contributors, like Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, but it’s difficult to register their identities with the quality of the narration. Vyas does a good job of finding both historical archive images as well as incorporating her personal photos from her upbringing in India.
- Flow/organization/pace – At times, I was confused about whether this video was a personal reflection or a research project. Vyas goes back and forth between discussing her experiences using a desktop computer in 1990 to mentioning the launch of the World Wide Web in 1992 by Tim Berners-Lee. Most of the images flowed smoothly. Vyes utilized the Ken Burns style of photo presentation.
- Media application – About 4 minutes into the video, Vyes includes a video clip of, I believe, is Bernes-Lee talking. This media element seems out of place given that the visual elements have mostly been still photos, illustrations and artwork. On the whole, the mix of images makes for a nice medley of visual presentation. There are some nice close-up images of computer chips and keyboards that add to the overall flavor. Nostalgic images of Vyas’s father and her own children are especially poignant. She ends on an up-to-date picture of her Facebook page, which is touching.
- Citations – Overall, Vyes attributes all the media elements she uses, including a copyrighted song from Coldplay and the theme from Sesame Street. Likewise, there is attribution to many of the images, but this end credit segment speeds through rather quickly.
Personally, I think Vyes should have focused more on her personal reflection on how the internet changed her life rather than how the internet changed everyone’s life.
Interesting piece – and I agree that the focus could have been sharper. Her use of photos is effective in helping to tell the story.
Mark,
I think that you are correct in concluding that Vyes should have used her own story as a bigger piece in showing how the internet has changed one individual. By going deeper into her own story and making the project more personal Vyes could have touched on more themes that viewers might be able to connect with and make the presentation more meaningful. With more generic surface accounts of how the internet has changed lives there is not as much room for personal connections from the audience.