Category: American Graduate

Digital Story Critique: “Elisha’s Story”

For this final critique, I chose I story from American Graduate, an ongoing project to help local youth in their quest to avoid the pitfalls of life and graduate from high school. A local public television station, Colorado Public Television 12 (CPT12), supports this project. Digital storytelling plays a key role in this initiative and CPT12 has posted a variety of videos created by American Graduate participants. One of them is a story about a young man’s struggle with the aftermath of his parents’ herion addiction in “This is My Story: Elisha’s Story.” As in previous critiques, I judged this digital story on the following assessment traits (as established by Jason Ohler in his book Digital Storytelling in the Classroom):

Originality, voice, creativity – Elisha narrates his own story, starting with how he and his family became homeless when he was 10 years old. The initial footage shows Elisha glancing at the camera from under a bridge somewhere in Denver. The footage changes to different locations in Denver as Elisha talks about how unstable his life became over the years.  He mentions dropping out of school, becoming a gang member, and doing drugs. Throughout the video, Elisha appears tense and defensive, which partially explains the title of his story, “Keep It Moving.”

Writing  – Elisha’s narration is rich with details and has a steady rhythm.  It’s not exactly poetry, but it’s solid storytelling. He mentions vivid images like”rats”, “roaches”and “40s.”  The tone and delivery is very genuine and honest.

Media Application  – There’s a good mix of video footage, narration and music. The audio mix is just right. There’s a simple transition between a selection of jazz music and a piece of hip hop near a point where Elisha decides to turn his life around and go back to school.

All semester long I’ve been examining the topic of adversity and how people can tell stories about how they cope with circumstances that fate has brought to them. The American Graduate series is a good example of young people expressing how they have struggled and survived with adversity in their short lives.

 

Digital Story Critique: “This is My Story: Dawn’s Story”

One of the Denver public television stations, Colorado Public Television 12 (CPT12), is supporting an initiative called American Graduate, an ongoing project to help local youth in their quest to avoid the pitfalls of life and graduate from high school.  Digital storytelling plays a key role in this initiative and CPT12 has posted a variety of videos created by American Graduate participants.  One of them is a story about a girl’s perspective in the foster care system called “This is My Story: Dawn’s Story.”

For this critique, I chose to review the video using the following assessment traits:

  • Writing – The author, Dawn, uses a very simple narrative to describe to the audience her experience as a foster child.  Details, like meeting her foster parents for the first time and going to church with her “new” sister, draw the viewer into her life.  On the whole, it sounded like Dawn had a good relationship with her new family while striving to maintain ties with her birth mother.  There was no hint of animosity or malice towards either group of people.
  •  Flow/organization/pacing – Not including American Graduate promotional material, Dawn’s story runs about 4 minutes.  She organizes her experience in a very simple chronological timeline from meeting her foster parents to seeing her birth mother again.  The linear progression is effective and, in some ways, takes the audience on a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride.  Nothing feels rushed and the photo images appear at a very steady pace.  The background music compliments the tone of the video.
  • Media application – In addition to the aforementioned background music, Dawn includes a good mix of original photos and video.  At the end, Dawn shows a present-day picture of the young woman she has become.  On the other hand, I thought she repeated a number of images too often and used some odd video effects that seemed out of place.

Stories of adversity take many shapes. I’m glad there’s a Denver-area television station that is giving young people an opportunity to express their rocky journeys through life.