BCPS Summer 2009 Workshop in Digital Storytelling and Oral History

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:33:54 -0400
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During the summer of 2009, UMBC’s New Media Studio teamed with the Center for History Education to offer a two-week workshop for Baltimore County K-12 teachers exploring the intersections of oral history and digital storytelling. The workshop was the culminating activity in CHE’s two-year “Making Master Teachers” program. Year One of the program focused on reading and research, while Year Two focused on incorporating primary sources in the classroom. The program was funded through the U.S. Department of Education's Teaching American History Grant Program. Teachers had an opportunity to learn classroom skills for creating their own work and developing student projects.

Projects from the workshop included "Hampton: A Revolutionary Place" .

Information for attendees : This summer workshop provides you with the opportunity to learn skills of digital storytelling that you will be able to use in your classrooms, both in delivering your own content and as a project option for your students' original work. In addition it will allow you to disseminate the work you did on Baltimore '68 and will provide UB with an innovative addition to its Baltimore '68 website. Since we are working under time constraints, we hope to come to the June sessions with a good idea of the form of the project, although the content can evolve over the course of the workshop. I propose that the Baltimore County high school group break into two teams and produce two digital stories about the uprising of April 1968 in Baltimore. I would suggest that each team takes a section of the UB Baltimore '68 driving tour (voted "Best Driving Tour for Visiting In-Laws" by City Paper and available at http://archives.ubalt.edu/bsr/timeline/index.html) and flesh it out with primary documents, excerpts from oral histories, music, images and anything else that would be illuminating. Before and after shots would be particularly effective in telling the story of the events. The finished products could find a home on the UB and CHE websites. This project would build on research you have already begun, could draw on the resources we have collected on the website, and would contribute greatly to UB's effort to make this time period understandable to the public. I hope you will consider it.

Recommended readings We recommend reviewing these first articles during the initial week and guide the discussion around the question: What makes an effective digital story? Other questions could be: What is a digital story? and How might I use digital storytelling in the classroom? The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling The Art of Digital Storytelling These next two articles will be discussed in the second week. The discussion could may on: What are the barriers to implementing digital storytelling in the classroom? As an advocate, how could I overcome these hurdles? Implementation of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom Digital Storytelling: Moving from Promise to Practice ALSO, here is a link to the introductory chapters of the Digital Storytelling Cookbook: http://www.storycenter.org/cookbook.pdf