Weekly Reflection: Spring (Break) Has Sprung!

1280px-Daytona_Beach_Sunrise_from_La_Playa_MotelToday is the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.  For students at the University of Colorado-Denver, tomorrow is the first (official) day of spring break.  A perfect time to get away from school work and rest the mind.  At the same time, students at several major universities will be thinking of their schools in the downtime as their basketball teams compete in the NCAA basketball tournament.  The men’s team of my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be playing Xavier University tonight, so I’ll be heading to a sports bar later to cheer the Badgers on to victory!

So it’s fair to say right now that my mind is not occupied with my studies, but I did want to mention something about my Learning With Digital Stories (INTE 5340) class.  This past week, I explored a unique digital storytelling cite called StoryCorps.   If you’re an avid listener of NPR, you’ve probably heard these personal stories from time to time.  Many of them involve people discussing how an adverse event or situation has changed their lives.  In my previous blog post, I wrote a critique of a moving digital story entitled “1st Squad, 3rd Platoon.”  With StoryCorps, I was amazed how much emotional detail can come from an audio recording of a person.  This gives me some ideas of what I might be able to accomplish when I create my own digital story later in this semester for this class.  I’m glad Lori, our instructor, gave us some flexibility in submitting future assignments.  Routine can dull the mind.

So now it’s time to sit back and relax.  Granted, I won’t be going to a beach in Cozumel, but at least I’ll have time to get outside and enjoy the (mostly) sunny terrain of Colorado and cheer my team in the Big Dance.  Go Badgers!

 

Digital Story Critique: “1st Squad, 3rd Platoon”

From time to time, I’ve listened to episodes of StoryCorps that have aired on NPR.  The simplicity of personal stories using audio recordings is remarkable.  At times, you can hear the emotional undercurrents as people discuss pivotal moments that have forever altered the course of their lives.  A number of these audio recordings have been supplemented with  animation.  To be honest, I’ve often associated animation with comedy genres (“Looney Tunes”, “The Simpsons”, “Futurama”, etc), but I was amazed how the animation work done by the Rauch Brothers complimented the adversity story “1st Squad, 3rd Platoon.” This reflection is told by Marine Lance Cpl. Travis Williams, who talks about how he’s been able to cope with life after a roadside bomb killed all his team members in Iraq back in 2005.  For this critique, I judged the digital story on the following assessment traits (as discussed by Jason Ohler in his book Digital Storytelling in the Classroom:

  • Story – Williams unfolds his experience in chronological order, which gives the viewer time to absorb his story.  The narration feels genuine.  I could hear the sadness and struggle in Williams’s voice as he talks about returning to an empty barracks after the roadside bomb killed his comrades.  Fortunately, the story ends on a positive note as Williams admits he is finding ways to reflect on his good fortune and cherishing every day in civilian life.
  • Originality, voice, creativity – In addition to Williams’s earnest narration, the Rauch Brothers animation’s adds visual context to the digital story.  The expressions on the faces of the characters match the tone of Williams’s voice over.  At no point did I feel the visual element draw my attention away from his narration of tragic events.  The StoryCorps project producers (Lizzie Jacobs, Maya Millett & Mike Rauch) deserve a lot of credit for giving Williams the room to tell his story.
  • Media grammar – Excellent.  Having working in television production, I could recognize the stellar production quality of the entire StoryCorps production team.  Williams’s audio recording was crisp, clean, and rich in detail.  In one instance, I swear I could almost see him crying by listening to the narration.  The video and sound editing are smooth and efficient.  There is some nice instrumental music that adds to the tone of the story.  As I stated earlier, the animation by the Rauch Brothers was impressive.

This was a very emotional story to absorb.  It took me a while to condense my thoughts in a blog review.  Still, I plan on coming back to StoryCorps to check out more personal reflections about people dealing with adversity in their lives.

 

 

Chapter Review: “The World of Digital Storytelling”

1024px-Family_watching_television_1958(Photo by Evert F. Baumgardner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Chapter 3 of Joe Lambert’s book Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community gives a broad overview of how the author came to San Francisco and helped found what would later be known as the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS).  In Chapter 4, Lambert discusses the components of a digital story and how these types of personal narratives fit into what he calls “the taxonomy of media practices” (p.38).

At the start of the chapter, Lambert lays out seven components the CDS values as important in a digital story.  In addition to elements such as photos, soundtrack, length and design, there are a couple of attributes I found interesting.  First is the concept of personal narration.  Unlike documentaries, which sometimes include narration by a celebrity or a professional voice-over artist, the first-person perspective offers more insight and emotional subtext in the tone of the voice.  Second is the “self-revelatory” component that gives the viewer awareness that the author experienced a significant turning point in the course of his/her life. Lastly is the idea of intention, where, as Lambert says, the digital story is “process over product” (p.38) where personal self-awareness by the author is the primary goal and concerns over the social media audience is a distant second.  This final component is significant.  In a Facebook world, it’s challenging for people to tell a revealing story without thinking of pandering to wider audience for the sake of a popular, trending topic.

When Lambert delves into the idea of “the taxonomy of media practices”, there is a statement that caught my attention.  He says, “In our view, the defense of creative control by the specialist creative class tends to ensure voice is not democratically distributed”(p.41).  These words made me reflect on my past experience working in television production.  Often times, it is the cable programmers and production companies who have the editorial power in deciding which sound bites from on-camera individuals make the final cut into the program.  Honestly, I like having that creative control to determine what media elements will be included as well as deleted from the project.  In the world of the decentralized YouTube programming, smartphone cameras and iMovie editing, the common citizen has more opportunities to create and distribute their own stories.  “Creative class” professional such as myself have come to see the impact in both positive and negative ways over the years.  Perhaps the biggest impact has been the steady downsizing in the media industry since the start of the 21st century.  Still, I like the fact that anyone with the proper skills and technology can voice their opinion on the World Wide Web.  This is something that Lambert and his collaborators emphasize in his organization when he states, “We are seeking a broadly applicable method for participatory media production” (p.42).

Overall, I like the simplicity of what Lambert and his cohorts at the Center for Digital Storytelling have established with facilitating the personal narrative.  To be sure, people can feel reluctant to express themselves to a cyberworld of strangers, but Lambert’s model makes storytelling an easy process that can be used by anyone.

DS 106 Daily Create: Hidden Faces All Around

@ds106dc #tdc1528 #ILT5340 Daily Create: Hidden Faces All Around – Neutral expression file cabinet.IMG_1012

Digital Story Critique: “Birth of the Internet”

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.