Category: higher education

Scholarship Response: “Moving Pictures”

1024px-Austin_Hall,_Harvard_University(By Daderot (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

This week, as I was conducting a Google search for the words “digital storytelling” and “education”, I came across a recent article from the website Harvard Law Today.  The article, “Moving Pictures”, discusses how law students are using documentary film making and digital storytelling to tell important stories about injustice.  One student interviewed is Sam Koplewicz, who heads an organization called the Harvard Law Documentary Studio.  He comments, “I think film moves us and interacts with us in a way that writing can’t.”  Koplewicz visited a refugee camp in Greece and interviewed young children through barbed-wire fences.  The Harvard Law Documentary Studio, or “Doc Studio” for short, has participants produce six films a year.  Another student, Andrea Clay, is creating a documentary on the development and utilization of the Socratic method in the education of law.  Other topics addressed by student filmmakers include gentrification, religion and political refugees.  Near the end of the article, there is an interview with a filmmaker and Harvard Law School lecturer named Rebecca Richman Cohen, who teaches courses in digital storytelling and documentary film.  She comments on how video recordings can help attorneys in arguing cases of clients that are located in remote places.  “Video lets lawyers bring clients’ voices directly to policymakers, judges, and mainstream media… it can expose corruption and law violations … and enhance public understanding of the law” she says.

It’s remarkable how the power of digital storytelling can be utilized by anyone with the right amount of determination and production skill.  To have young legal minds at one of the United States’ most prestigious law schools embrace that power is quite remarkable.

 

 

Scholarly Response: Digital Storytelling and the Flint Water Crisis

um-water-research-540x360This week, I found an interesting article from the University of Michigan-Flint regarding the topic of digital storytelling. The community of Flint, Michigan received over $100,000 in seed money to fund various projects in the clean-up of Flint’s contaminated water supply. In addition to long-term projects aimed at solving the city’s infrastructure, there will be funding set aside to teaching journalism and digital storytelling skills to Flint-area students during a summer class on environmental issues. Instructors from UM-Flint, UM-Dearborn, UM-Ann Arbor, and Genesse Early College will collaborate on the project.  According to Jeremy Allen at UM Public Affairs, “teachers will assist the students in producing digital stories describing their own and others’ experiences in Flint during the past months.”

With much of the mainstream media covering the presidential race, it’s hard to find any coverage lately on the impact of civic disasters like the one going on in Flint. Lead poisoning by a careless corporation is one thing, but lead poisoning as a result of lazy government oversight is another. Getting the perspectives of Flint citizens who have been impacted by this health crisis could give digital storytelling some greater visibility and credibility.

Digital Story Critique – “Opening Doors”

Immigration is a very hot topic.  From American politicians (or pseudo-politicians) advocating a ban on Muslims from entering the United States to European leaders closing their boarders to Middle Eastern refugees from war-torn countries, there is a lot of concern regarding immigrants.  Most of the soundbites come from influential people in power.  The immigrants, many of whom come legally for educational or employment reasons, rarely get an opportunity to give their perspective.  That’s why it’s refreshing to watch “Opening Doors“, a StoryCenter video created by Tahira Hussain, a student from Pakistan.  She carries the responsibility of being the first person in her family to go to college.  For this critique, I judged the digital story on the following assessment traits (as established by Jason Ohler in his book Digital Storytelling in the Classroom):

  • Story – Hussain draws the viewer in by telling her story first-hand.  She gives a glimpse into the cultural traditions of her community in Pakistan, including the staggering difference between how a family is treated when a daughter, rather than a son, leaves for college.  Even before she got accepted into a college, she admitted she was “too scared to apply.” She also comments that she could not go to the local doctor by herself because she was “not allowed to go out without a man.”  By the end of the story however, Hussain seems more confident after completing her studies.  In addition, she remarks how she has inspired other women in her Pakistani village to get an education.
  • Originality, voice and creativity –  If Hussain had told this story in her native language, there might have been a greater emotional undercurrent in her voice, but she does a solid job of unfolding the timeline of events in English.  She includes a number of personal photographs from her childhood in Pakistan as well as her schooling in the United States, including photos of her creating banners in support of environmental causes.  There are also a couple of images, including a video clip of rippling water, that add abstract emotional layers to the story.
  • Media grammar –  It’s fairly evident that this was Hussain’s first time creating a digital story.  Some of the photos were scanned at lower resolutions and the audio level of the narration varies throughout the video.  Still, it’s not bad for a first effort.

As a tutor at the Community College of Denver, I often work with students from far-off places in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.  I sometimes wonder if each of these students have their own story to tell about leaving the world they were born into then and the world they live in now.   Even loud-mouth politicians could learn a thing or two from them.

 

Scholarly Response: “Story Time”

Recently, I was skimming through On Wisconsin, the alumni magazine from my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  In addition to articles about noteworthy alumni, there are often stories about professors and students conducting innovating research projects on the Madison campus.  One such article, “Story Time”, detailed a unique storytelling project involving UW students and military veterans at a Madison-area Veterans Administration (VA) hospital.  The project, called “My Life, My Story“, was initiated in 2013 by a UW School of Medicine and Public Health psychiatry resident and has since been adopted by six other VA facilities across the country.  The program gives veterans an opportunity to tell their stories about what they have gone through in military and civilian life.  A volunteer, usually a medical or literature student, acts as an interviewer and writes a 1000-word story.  This personal testomony enables a health care provider, such as a VA doctor or nurse, to better understand the background of a patient.  The article gives some enlightening examples of patients telling their stories and students commenting on the significance of the project.

It’s a remarkable how storytelling can help people discuss about the adversity they have encountered in their lives.  In cases such as this, it enables medical professionals to look at something other than a chart to get a better picture of a patient’s history.  Especially if a patient has put his or her life in harm’s way.

Scholarly Response: “Why Your Department Needs Social Media”

Every now and then, I like to check out educational “trade” publications for articles on the pros and cons of new technology in the classroom.  On The Chronicle of Higher Education, I found a piece by Rachel Herrmann entitled “Why Your Department Needs Social Media.”  Herrmann,  a Ph.D. lecturer at the University of Southampton in England, gives a faculty member’s perspective on the best ways for instructors to utilize applications such as Facebook and Twitter to better communicate with students.

Herrmann gives some very concrete first-hand examples of how using social media enables her to post information about upcoming events, announce details regarding grants and share photos of faculty-student social functions.  Likewise, she mentions how students give her feedback about their accomplishments and receive live-Tweets of major lectures and recruitment-day information sessions.  Herrmann does admit that there are a number of university policies and administrative oversights that slow down the process of establishing a faculty social media presence.  She goes on to offer several suggestions (fewer rules, a department social media manager, etc) to make the overall process more efficient.

After reading this article, I thought about what many of the students I have talked to in the Student Success Center at the Community College of Denver have mentioned regarding communicating with their instructors.  Few to none of these students mention their instructors connecting with them on any social media platform whatsoever.  In addition, many of the students say they have, at times, a difficult time getting a simple email response from their instructors regarding an assignment question.  I realize many of the instructors are temporary/part-time adjuncts who can only commit so much of their time for the amount of money they receive for their efforts.  Plus, both instructors and students are entitled to a certain amount of privacy.

Social media can be an effective tool of group communication, but that effectiveness is dependent on the pro-active engagement of all the people in the group.  Maybe things are different in England, but I’m sure here in the United States, educators want to find the best ways to reach their students.  Just not 24/7.