Digital Storytelling

     Since we have probably graduated more than 100 DEN members from AFI’s Screen Ed program, we should have many schools ready to spread their digital storytelling wings. Well written and creatively filmed videos are just what these contests with looming deadlines are looking for. Let’s celebrate our students’ work and apply the strategies of visual grammar to share what schools can do with technology.
     C-SPAN’s Student Cam Documentary Contest deadline is the day after tomorrow, March 30th. A bit late to get started now. Good luck to those who have entered or are just finishing up.

     The National School Board Association’s Student Moviefest in conjunction with their T+L Conference closes off entries in just four weeks with an April 23rd deadline (was also the “dead” line for a couple of other great storytellers, Shakespeare and Cervantes). With all the action we managed to pack into the Door Scene, illustrating “How Can One Person Make a Difference?” in a 60 second Public Service Announcement should be right up an AFI alum’s alley. Share your story or idea about the extraordinary power of one human spirit to make a difference. And winners get a $1700 travel stipend to the conference in Nashville, October 17-19th. Don’t forget to check out last year’s winners near the bottom of their website. Recognize any of those shot angles?

       The International Student Media Festival gives you the most time and the broadest range of categories (from photography and websites to animation and live action video) with its deadline at the end of May. New this year is a podcast category!
     Of course, the folks out in California have their own venerable (this is the 41st year!) video and multimedia celebration going on. Just a little over two weeks left for the California Student Media Festival, left coasters! The deadline is April 16th.

     So how ‘bout it AFI Screen Ed alumni and all you other media savvy educators, don’t you think you have a class or two that would love to rise to one of these challenges?

     This was going to be a podcast with the voices of my fellow AFI attendees from last week’s training with DEN members in L.A. What better evaluation than to get the students’ eye view from a bunch of educators? However, it’s going to take a while longer to stitch those sound bites together. In the mean time, while I was digging a little deeper at the AFI site for a handout I’m making for a digital storytelling panel in a few weeks, I found this independent report on the impact of AFI’s Screen Ed program.
     I am happy, proud, even smug to report that there isn’t much new here for me and probably not for you either if you’ve been making videos with your students. And I experienced just about all of the same things last year working with senior citizens on telling their stories in my former district. But it’s great to have this codified. If you are trying to move your staff, school or district further along in the digital storytelling department, this report is some first class ammunition. And if that’s not enough for you, maybe I can put you in touch with some 21st century storytellers who were born during Prohibition.
     Here are a few more shots of DEN members in action during the AFI training.
   

     I have always loved language. From my earliest exposure to reading, spelling, phonics, and diagramming sentences (a lost art!) to my later studies of “foreign” languages and a career as a Spanish teacher, I have been fascinated by our innate ability and desire to communicate. It was that fascination that eventually led me out out of the classroom and into the rôle of a multimedia facilitator and fan of digital storytelling. For years I have preached about the parallels between making videos and writing, but I had never heard the connection so eloquently made until I spent a couple of days with a number of other STAR DEN Educators at the American Film Institute up on a hill overlooking Los Angeles. I was almost up and out of my seat when AFI K-12 Screen Ed Associate Director Frank Guttler made the connection between sentences and film shots, long pans and zooms (as in your typical birthday party video) as run-on sentences, and a well organized series of shots/sentences becoming a scene/paragraph. But you don’t have to take my (written) word for it. Here’s a thirteen minute podcast with Frank just as we were winding up the two days of “Lights, Camera, Education!” training. Download GuttlerVisGrammar.m4a

     You can get a feel for the program and watch some video at AFI’s website. unitedstreaming subscribers can see all the Sean Astin narrated videos and download the “21st Century Educator’s Handbook” from unitedstreaming.

     That’s what a half dozen people from the local FOX station came out to tell us at our March meeting of the Chicagoland Television Educators Council. After making a two hour trek (one way!) out from Chicago to our Naperville meeting site, two of the webmasters, two station managers,
and two of the on-air sports anchors explained the technology, their commitment to school video makers, offered some tips for shooting and reporting, and invited us to bring our students by for a visit.

     Though this is still more or less in preview, they are hoping to have an operational version ready for us by the end of April. Move over JumpCut and YouTube, FOX outlets around the country may soon be letting students edit online and post their own videos about what’s happening in sports AND the arts at their schools!

     If you’re so smart, why don’t you have your own video contest? Well, a man out here in the northwest suburbs of Chicago does sponsor one to inspire students to take a look at the world right around them and empower them to offer  their opinions and solutions. In the Great Minds Foundation’s own words:

“Many problems in our environment and society do not always receive the attention they deserve in the mass media. With that thought, the Great Minds Foundation, founded by Joe Elias, is launching the Great Minds Video Challenge. Students will inform, inspire and encourage their peers to act responsibly and fulfill their potential. These commercials will promote positive action in a format in which they can relate. Our goal is to encourage students to creatively share their views on specific topics, which affect our community.”
     Every year the entries are shown in each participating high school where the student body votes for their school’s finalists. Those entries are then sent on to a panel of judges to determine the winners of the $1,000, $500, and $250 prizes. This year the challenge is to imagine what you can get out of “a day in…”? That could be a person, place, thing or event. Last year’s PSA’s (public service announcements) are available from the finalists’ site.
     You don’t need a foundation or a national contest to empower and honor the views of your students. You can challenge them to examine and share their thoughts through video or animation in your classroom, school or intradistrict.

     Though the Indy 500 is still almost three months away, the video contest season is upon us. C-SPAN’s Student Cam Documentary Contest deadline is looming March 30th (see the Feb. 1st post). The International Student Media Festival (Feb. 9th post) is ramping up for its deadline at the end of May. And the National School Board Association’s Student Moviefest in conjunction with their T+L Conference just opened up last week with an April 23rd deadline. Winners get a $1700 travel stipend to the conference in Nashville, October 17-19th.

     Looks like the links from my fall posts analyzing last year’s finalists have changed. However, you can still catch up to those top videos at the T+L site. This year’s theme challenges students to answer the question, “How Can One Person Make a Difference?” with a 60 second PSA (public service announcement). The videos must be created in iMovie or one of the Final Cut programs and uploaded in video podcast format. The complete rules are available in a Word document from the site.
     If you’d like a look at a world changing video by a student, let me point you to a site I draw a lot of inspiration from: the San Fernando Education Technology Team. The “Sweatshops” video from iCan2 got the attention of all the corporations it pointed the finger at and two international conferences that asked permission to use it. There’s an interview with the film makers and SFETT mentor Marco Torres at the George Lucas Education Foundation site that gives the details of the impact of that single student project.

        Just reflecting on and recuperating from IL-TCE 2007. I think it was our best conference ever and the best time I’ve had personally and professionally. Our keynotes, David Pogue and Jason Ohler, were both very funny and musical in addition to being fonts of information and inspiration. I have to admit I was more than a little apprehensive before the conference, though. Sure, there were my usual worries about getting all the speakers in with our windy, snowy weather, but I was also doing a couple of new presentations myself. My biggest concern was a full, one day workshop based on AFI‘s K-12 Screen Education program. Two concerns, actually: it’s really a two day workshop and I’ve never gone through the training myself.
     I knew I was going to be alright after the fifteen unsuspecting participants showed up with more equipment than we could use and eager to help me shoot some b-roll for another project.

     Yes, you can’t do a two day workshop in one day! But with the cooperative bunch of educators I had and some good advice and the regular agenda from AFI, we were able to pick out excellent learning activities and make some movies. By lunchtime they had the shot vocabulary down pat. I was hearing things like, “This close-up won’t work after that follow shot,” and “Let’s try a medium shot to POV and then back to a choker/reaction shot.” We had to experience some of the activities vicariously using video from the “Lights! Camera! Education!” clips narrated by Sean Astin and available on unitedstreaming. Everyone did get an account with AFI and were able to download a copy of the “21st Century Teacher’s Handbook” to use as a guide to the “Door Scene” and the different shots.

     Teachers who were complete strangers (well, OK, teachers are never complete strangers to each other) at 8:30 were comrades in film by 10 when they arrived back in the room with their first footage. And it was great to see how much more they valued being able to edit on a computer when the only editing tool they had for the first exercise was the pause button on the camcorder. What hidden talents emerged too! There was some Oscar worthy acting and creative, on-the-spot sound effects in addition to the fine cinematography. I’m confident these folks will be able to go back to their schools and districts with the tools to excite their colleagues and move their students’ videos up a level or two.
     The following day I had a 45 minute concurrent session to show another forty or so attendees what the handbook and the unitedstreaming videos have to offer . That was fun and even more condensed, of course. But the kicker was that I had a teacher made video of the “Door Scene” from the day before to bring it all home.
     I am even more excited to be joining California DEN members for the two day training in a week and a half out in L.A. at the AFI campus. And it’s not just the weather (forecast says “most” of the snow here should be melted by then). It’s always a great time when the DEN gathers, I haven’t seen Jannita in months, and I will finally get to meet the very helpful AFI team in person.
     …Action!