Category: adversity

Response: Chapter 2 of “New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning”

In the past three weeks, students, like myself, in the Learning with Digital Stories class (INTE 5340) at UC-Denver have been critiquing a variety of digital stories found on the Internet. There are a rich variety of perspectives I’ve seen, from people overcoming debilitating injuries to an old man recounting his time in a Nazi prison camp. Textbook readings, however, are not my favorite assignments.   This week, we delved into the second chapter of New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning. Whereas the first chapter dealt largely with the various definitions of literacy, this next chapter covers some new territory involving the concept of practices and how that relates to literacy.

Authors Colin Lanshear and Michele Knobel creatively illustate the term “practices”, as initially defined by Andrez Reckwitz, to the reader:

“In short, practices are routinized ways of moving our bodies, handling objects and using things, understanding and describing the world, desiring and conceiving of tasks and purposes, of treating subjects and so on (p.34).”

In this explanation, I feel the term “practices” sounds very much like the word “traditions.” The phrase “describing the world” almost could be interchanged with the word “storytelling.”  Now that I think of it, this description of practices sound very similar to the concept of folklore, where certain customs, including written and oral communication, were handed down from generation to generation.  Folklore seems in play a factor into Lanshear and Knobel’s theme of literacy.  They believe that literacy “enables meaning-making to occur or ‘travel’ across space and time, mediated by systems of signs in the form of encoded text of one kind or another (p. 40).”

“Ah ha!” I thought to myself. This was the moment where I could see the emerging link between literacy and digital storytelling (even though that phrase had not been mentioned).  Whereas a much of traditional folklore involved oral communication, when the message had to be “handed down” face-to-face, “literacy” requires the message to be put in writing or some other form that ensured “permanence and transcendence” (p.40).   Personal blogs are one example of this type of literacy.  The authors tie in James Gee’s concept of “Discourse” from the previous chapter in explaining how each individual views a blog based on what particular “group” that viewer believes he or she belongs to.

The second chapter certainly did engage my interest in how our society has gone from communicating from face-to-face to Facebook.   As I mentioned earlier, I watched a digital story about a survivor of a Nazi prison camp.  His name was Sy Bakker.   I imagine that in a time before social media, broadcast journalism, or even newspapers, such a story like Bakker’s would not have survived as an oral tradition.  It’s comforting to know that with the use of camera phones, computer editing and YouTube; Bakker’s story of adversity and endurance will be available to anyone with a computer and a broadband connection.

Yet, I have not once read the phrase “digital storytelling” in these first few chapters.  Still waiting for that even bigger “Ah Ha!” moment to come.

Digital Story Critique 3: The Story of Sy Bakker

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m very interested in the topic of adversity.  My past struggles have been largely financial, but I’ve be fortunate to live out of harm’s way.  Not so for Sy Bakker, who had to endure Nazi oppression during the German occupation of The Netherlands during World War II.   Bakker, and other Charleston Retirement Community members, told their stories as part of The Charlestown Digital Story Project which involved students from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

For this critique, I focused on three assessment traits to gauge the storytelling:

  • Voice: This story is a straight “I was there” narration told by Sy Bakker himself.  There are no other soundbites.  At times, I could hear Bakker’s tone change as he described an encounter with a German soldier pointing a gun at him.  In another instance, he describes the terrible conditions at a prison camp: the straw floors, the small amounts of bread and the tiring labor tasks.  The recording is crisp, clean and easy to hear.   In a historical context, voice is important to consider since the eyewitness can give a unique account of small details of a large war.
  • Flow/pacing: The students at UMBC do a very good job of organizing the main audio elements of the story: Bakker’s narration and simple violin music.   The breaks in the narration gives the viewer a chance to reflect on Bakker’s experiences.  There is a nice flow of historical images, still photos and a picture of Sy Bakker at the time of the recording.  Pacing is important to give the viewer a chance to soak in all the historical details and gain a greater understand of what it meant to be a prisoner in a Nazi labor camp.
  • Media application: Like the comments before, the students use a simple mix of audio and video elements.  Some of the still photos are of sunsets and barren fields, which I believe gives the viewer an opportunity to briefly reflect.   It would have been nice to see additional historical photos of Bakker as a student in The Netherlands or maybe of his family in France, but such archived material may not have been available.   If there is one more thing I would have liked to have seen, it would have been some type of statement/reflection from Sy Bakker about how that time during Nazi occupation changed his life.   Maybe he could have passed along some words of wisdom to younger generations.

There are many more digital stories from The Charlestown Digital Story Project and I recommend anyone to click on the hyperlink above and check them out.

INTE 5340 Focal Theme: Adversity

Aristole

“The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.”   – Aristotle

For my focal theme this semester in INTE 5340, I’ve chosen the topic of adversity.  Since 2003, I’ve gone through several layoffs working in the television production business.  It’s hard to describe how it feels to have a stable income and sense of purpose taken away from you through no fault of your own.  Explanations such as “It’s the economy” or “We needed to make a change” do little to address the traumatic shock of a livelihood taken.

I’ve often thought of adversity as a challenge not by choice, whereas an adventure (swimming with sharks, parachuting, etc) is a challenge by choice.  My intention is to focus on economic adversity as a result of a job loss.  I think this is a topic that does not get enough attention in our society.  This project will unfold over the semester on my blog.

My main learning goals:

  1. I hope to learn how digital storytelling content can best be used to express how people, like myself, deal with the adversity of a job loss.
  2. I hope visitors to my blog will learn how the adversity of job loss and unemployment can impact the lives of people in the United States.

Response To A Selected Scholarship – Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab

While conducting a Google search the term “digital storytelling”, I came across the Colombia Digital Storytelling Lab (DSL).   This site is rich in information and media content relating to digital storytelling.   In addition, the team at Columbia University in New York have done an impressive job in creating a website dedicated to the art and relevance of digital storytelling.   Much of the content is very professional, including content from contributors at major publications, artists and digital production companies.   Not many of the digital stories were created with consumer-grade recording and editing devices.  Still, the wide variety of perspectives can offer viewers a better idea on how digital storytelling can impact societies.  One such video is The Displaced, a simple yet moving digital story about refugees across the world.   I recommend everyone to stop by this site.

Digital Critique – 30 Years and 73 Seconds: The Challenger Disaster

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Tomorrow, January 30th, will be the 30th anniversary of the Challenger space shuttle disaster.   I remember, in that pre-social media era, hearing the announcement on the public address system at my middle school.   There will no doubt be a lot of reflection of that fateful day in the media.  One of those such retrospectives is on the website of KUSA Channel 9, a local NBC affiliate here in Denver, Colorado.  It’s called 30 Years and 73 Seconds: The Challenger Disaster.  What’s unique about this retrospective is that a good portion of the video footage was recorded from Cape Kennedy on that day.  The archived footage includes elementary school kids from Boulder watching the launch and seeing their stunned reactions to the incident, which NASA officials announced as a “major malfunction.”

We often think of digital storytelling as from the perspective of the ordinary citizen with a smartphone rather than from a local news reporter with a camera crew.   Since this particular digital story involves video content from the pre-YouTube era, it makes sense to incorporate broadcast journalism substance and style from the mid 1980s timeframe.

For this digital critique, I’ll focus on a few key areas:

  1. Research – The production team utilizes the archived video from 1986 well.  The narrator and on-air journalist, Gary Shapiro, was on the ground in Florida then to cover a feature about the group of Boulder elementary kids who were sent to watch the Challenge launch.   The web posting also includes an array of scanned photos, including the tragic photos of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding.   In addition, there is quite of bit of up-to-date footage of those students who are now in their middle age as well as Shapiro himself.
  2. Sense of audience – This was one key area in which the digital content was strongest.  Anyone who was roughly the same age as the Boulder students could remember that day and how they felt both then and now.   In my case, I was able to sympathize with them in a pre-9/11 era when I thought this was the biggest tragedy I had ever seen on TV.   Fortunately, those students were able to overcome the adversity of that fateful day and witness the next shuttle lunch 18 months later.
  3. Media application – Like I mentioned in the research section, the production team made good use of the archived footage.  The cross-cutting better the past and the present bridged the 30 year time gap.  One criticism I have is the way the piece is narrated.   Like most television journalists, Shapiro uses a certain cadence, with the wide range of inflection, that I sometimes find a bit too formulaic.

Unfortunately, the website doesn’t offer much flexibility in being able to embed the video into this blog, so you’ll have to click the link and jump to a new tab.