• citizenship,  digital storytelling,  empowerment,  media literacy,  story

    Digital stories in the Kwak’wala language

    Only 270 people can speak Kwak’wala (source) so it’s highly endangered. Digital storytelling has a vital role in keeping a record of languages as they’re spoken today. The Mayatlan’s Wila Culture and Language Group for their Kwak’wala Digital Language Project has won Canadian Government funding to create 20 digital stories in the Kwak’wala language that will reflect daily activities, such as family meal times and home routines, as well as traditional events like food gathering… Capturing a language in this way in itself is not enough; digital storytelling needs to be just one piece of the jigsaw pieces that make a language relevant and vibrant. I do wish the speakers…

  • digital storytelling,  story,  Wales

    Digital stories containing home movies

    Here are some links to digital stories shown on the BBC website which contain home movies, archive film and especially-shot video – i.e. not just stills To Know Someone by Canadian student Nicole Lavergne Smith mixes home movie footage of her grandmother as a young woman with Nicole’s story of her grandmother’s dementia today. Another effective, albeit brief, use of home movie in a digital story by Gill Jones from the Breaking Barriers project. This Rhondda Lives! story by Les Rees is remarkable for its use of 1926 carnival archive footage from the National Library of Wales. Les was actually at this carnival and remembers it well. Here’s a seldom-screened…

  • citizenship,  digital storytelling

    Jason Ohler’s new book

    The author of the classic ‘Digital Storytelling in the Classroom’ has finished writing his latest book.  On 31st October 2010, Corwin Press will publish Digital Community, Digital Citizen by Jason Ohler: “It looks at the rise of digital communities, the evolution of citizenship (local, global and digital), the complications (and opportunities) arising from kids communicating in cyberspace and how education can help prepare students for a world that will need them to use technology effectively, creatively and wisely. Topics addressed: character education for digital kids, how school boards need to respond to everything from sexting to cyberbullying, how to help teachers and students ‘see’ the technology that has become invisible…