Digital Story Telling: An Evolving Adult Education Tool
Digital Story Telling is the modern technological face of the ancient art of story telling. A digital story is a short movie clip that displays a personal story or experience in a creative way using multimedia technology like audio and video. Digital stories are a means of personal self-expression and are created by arranging a series of mostly static and sometimes moving images in a logical manner with a voice-over narration explaining the significance of the images. Background music can be used if needed. Various movie making software like Adobe Premier, Microsoft Movie Maker and Photo Story 3, Apple’s iMovie and open source Movie Masher cab be used to convert images and video clips into a media file after adding graphics and titles. This media file can be played on a computer, DVD player or uploaded on a website. For more information on how to create digital stories please refer to: http://www.umass.edu/wmwp/DigitalStorytelling/How%20to%20Create%20a%20digital%20story.htm
For visual learners who would like to see how a digital stories are made, here is a simple video that explains the process clearly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yU8zE5LBBY&feature=related . I would also like to share another interesting video dated February 2009 that shows a new software being introduced by the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories to test the making of a digital story by multiusers.
A sample collection of online digital stories can be viewed on this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/audiovideo/sites/galleries/pages/capturewales.shtml
The following video I found on the internet touched my heart because it closely portrays what I witness frequently in my work with new immigrant women:
Success in the field: Digital story telling has been used as a powerful tool in adult education and life long learning. It has been used successfully as an add-on program to formal education, but personally, I have seen it achieve extraordinary results in a non-formal learner setting as part of a community support project.
My fascination with Digital Story Telling as a tool for adult education is almost two and a half years old. It all started when I was working in a local community centre/women’s shelter * with a group of new immigrant women who had escaped violence or war situations in their own countries before migrating to Canada. The centre conducted group activities for these women to help them reconcile with their past and adjust to their lives in a new country. As an activity, the women were told to share their stories of struggles, pain and courage by painting watercolour images on sheets of paper. As soon as the women began pouring out their feelings with the help of a paint brush, we realized that their desire to express themselves was so intense, almost furious, that we had to arrange for something more powerful to help them in their catharsis. It was at that time that we decided to make videos of their paintings with the added feature of a voice-over narration by the women explaining the significance of what they had painted. The result was a video collection of extremely moving tales of the triumph of the human spirit over all obstacles. The videos were then digitized and put on CDs which the women took with them to share with their families and friends. The whole experience allowed the women to start their healing process because they had learned so much about themselves, their surroundings, their past and new skills for their future.
As the women created their digital stories with other women in several workshops, they were able to enrich their learning experience on multiple levels. The process helped them gain self-confidence as they improved their communication skills and overcame their English language barrier while preparing for their narration scripts. They learned to write about and articulate their feelings effectively. They experienced a renewed sense of accomplishment as they improved their computer skills and familiarized themselves with a number of multi media techniques like video making and sound recording. In this particular case, because of the sensitivity of their experience, the group of women did not want their digital stories to be uploaded on a website. They just wanted to share it on a personal level with the people they knew.
In early 2007, I had prepared a wiki as part of another course requirement in which I had mentioned this project which was still under consideration at that time. (http://innovations.oise.utoronto.ca/edtech/index.php/Digital_Story_Telling). The power of this educational tool is evident to me now that I have witnessed the implementation and success of digital story telling in that community support program.
Reflection on the course readings: As I learn about how adults learn as part of my studies at OISE, I am now able to analyze the learning processes and achievements of the women during their digital story making activity. I understand their learning behaviour in the light of andragogical assumptions that Merriam (2001) has highlighted to describe the adult learner. The women were using their “reservoir of life experiences” as “a rich resource” for their learning that had been necessitated by their “needs closely related to changing social roles.” During the first phase of the project (painting their experiences), we only provided the women with a general guideline about how to use paints and brushes, but it was their own minds that reflected on their experiences and took independent decisions on what lines and colours would best depict their true feelings.
The women appeared eager to learn and seemed to have an internal driving force (which I think was their desire to heal their lives) rather than external stimuli (which could have been the challenges of settling into a new country). They wanted to take an initiative in learning new techniques on how to convert their static paintings into digital stories which reflects what Merriam has pointed out as being characteristic of an “autonomous and self-directed” adult learner. In addition, the women seemed clear in their minds about why they were participating in the group. This points to what Mezirow (1985 & 2000) calls the result of “critical reflection” that emerges from an “understanding of the historical, cultural, and biographical reasons for one’s needs, wants, and interests.”
Digital story telling can add an interesting dimension to any educational program whether formal or informal. The following link provides information on how to create a rubric to help the teacher/instructor assess and grade the skills learned by the students in a digital story telling activity. http://www.umass.edu/wmwp/DigitalStorytelling/Lesson%20Plans%20for%20Digital%20Storytelling.htm
In the realm of Web 2.0: Digital story telling is slightly different from video blogging or vlogging and video sharing on the Youtube website. Although video is the common factor in all these forms of self-expression, the first two are internet based while it is the digital story creator’s choice whether to upload their digital stories on the internet or simply share them with a selected few. All three video forms satisfy a creator’s desire to share their personal ideas and communicate with the world.
Currently, there is talk of a newer version of digital story telling called Web 2.0 Story Telling. Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine in their 2008 article: Web 2.0 Story Telling, Emergence of a New Genre, (http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/Web20StorytellingEmergenc/47444) discuss the idea of interactive story telling on the internet which can combine the main story told by the author with input or commentary by readers. The authors talk of a new “rapidly evolving genre” of storytelling where “Web 2.0 has eased the method of content creation offering many points of entry, both for readers and for co-writers.” In this article, Alexander and Levine mention a website: http://www.dreamingmethods.com/
Alexander and Levine point to a significant danger to preserving the sanctity of intellectual property in Web 2.0 Story Telling. They assert that even though more and more story telling is happening online and “developing in interesting ways…this sort of content repurposing, redesign, and republication can open up problems of version or content control, yet in return, it offers the possible harvesting of the story telling energies of the creative world.” An interesting open public discussion on the concept of Web 2.0 Story Telling is present on another website http://web2storytelling.wikispaces.com/ created by the same authors.
that has introduced the idea of “multi-layered” digital stories on the internet that combine “hypertext with rich media” producing digital stories that use sounds, animation, images and interactivity with the viewer. The website, describing their interactive digital stories says that “they're also playing with interactivity for the reader - pointing and clicking with the mouse or using the keyboard to choose, change or manipulate things that happen on-screen.”
Things to keep in mind: As I advocate the usefulness of digital story telling in an adult education program, I would also like to mention a few factors that must be kept in mind when implementing this tool. Before the start of the program, it is important to assess the particular nature and needs of the group of learners. Also, the ability of the instructors to use the required multimedia software and their qualification to teach it to others must be assessed. Care must also be taken to outline a plan on how to guide students to express their ideas and feelings in a meaningful manner. Special care is required for providing adult learners with a comfortable and non-threatening environment where they feel free to talk about their personal, sometimes emotional, experiences. The students must also be informed about copyright laws and encouraged to use their own original music and pictures in their digital stories. After all, that’s what digital stories are all about: original self-expression. As in any other educational tool, digital story telling also depends on how it is implemented and managed by the educator.
*- The names of the community centre and its clients have not been disclosed in this blog due to privacy constraints of the organization.
-Nilofar
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