In "Constructing the Samurai" students used digital story techniques to explore aspects of samurai culture through visual assignments. The honors class was taught by Professor Constantine Vaporis during the Fall 2009 and 2010 semesters. Here are the results:

Fall, 2010
Oishi and the Loyal Retainers (Tina Zou)
The Adventures of Samurai Asakura Yoshimoto (Sara Ross, Cynthia Dang)
Samurai Final Open Shot (Sean Palmateer, Julian Brezon)
"Armor of the Samurai" (Brandon Callahan and Adam Robinson)
Martial Arts During the Tokugawa Era (David Eastman, Glen Langan)
"Forging the Samurai" (Steven Cornthwaite, Max Petulante)
"Zen Buddhism and the Samurai" (Caitlin Smith)
"Seppuku: Death Before Dishonor" (Nathaniel Castill Jr.)
"Seppuku in 20th Century Japan" (Sarah Stark)
"Tokugawa's Melting Pot" (Dwumah Frimpong)

Fall 2009
Women's Role in Samurai Films - Samantha Larsen
Samurai Honor - Rebecca Walter
Recipe for a Samurai - Becca Reeves
Seppuku
Marriage and Gender Among Samurai in Tokugawa Japan - James Chrismer, Momoka Watanabe, Kazutomo Terada
Chushingura in Transition - Matthew Murphy
The Social Relationships of the Samurai - Sammantha Chin and Lara English
HIST 355 Final Project - Daniel Graham
Armor of the Samurai - Rachel and Angela
Bushido: The Way of the Warrior - David Baldwin
Progression of the Samurai
Fallen Cherry Blossoms- Kamikaze Pilots - Harsh Bambawale
Samurai in Games

Students in the Shriver Center's Peaceworker Program's Summer Pro Seminar created these stories reflecting on their service and experiences abroad. The 2010 stories were submitted to the "My Piece of the Peace Corps" video contest on YouTube.

MCS101L, Multimedia Literacy Lab, is a one-credit course offered for the
first time at UMBC in the Spring of 2010. Students were given 6 story
prompts to choose from for their final digital story projects.

With the goal of building a greater sense of community in the Linehan Artist Scholars Program, students in the Linehan Freshman Seminar class participated in a Digital Story Workshop over a four week period. Their stories reflect the broad concerns of young talented artists as they begin their university careers in the arts. The stories speak of family, creative passions, and the search for identity in a complicated and fractured world.

During January break the New Media Studio held its fifth annual digital storytelling workshop for UMBC faculty. Participants learned the technology and methodology of digital moviemaking, creating their own personal narratives while exploring applications in teaching and learning. Ten UMBC faculty members were joined by Archana Bhandari, Director of Instructional Technology at UMB School of Social Work for the three-day course. Workshop alumn Jason Loviglio, Director of the Media and Communication Studies program assisted in facilitating the writing component of the workshop. Other facilitators included Paul Iwancio, Bill Shewbridge and studio research assistants Satarupa Joardar, Chris Ferrera and Steve Yeager.

Enjoy stories from the group:

View more photos from the workshop.

During the Fall 2009 semester, students in ELC-A 504/054 (taught by Polina Vinogradova) produced digital ethnographies using main principles and techniques of digital storytelling. The students worked in groups and explored cultural communities of their choice. Focusing on either a particular aspect of culture or a theme within a cultural community the students developed and conducted interviews, analyzed the information they collected, and produced digital stories based on the interview answers and their understanding of the subject. The goal of this project was not only to introduce the students to a multimodal form of self-expression, but also for the students to explore different perceptions of culture outside of class and experience cross-cultural communication while working on digital stories with their classmates.

Inside a Heart

Our Celebrations

Rainbow Flavor

In ELC-B 504/054 (taught by Tsisana Palmer), the students produced individual digital stories about important aspects and events in their lives while exploring different meanings of culture and cross-cultural communication.

Ramadon

Mysterious City

Arabic

Greatest Man

I Love You

In this core course for the MA program for Intercultural Communication in the Fall 2009 semester, the students worked with undergraduate students in Visual Arts 395 to develop stories about an intercultural incident or encounter that was a crucial factor in motivating them to study intercultural communication. Accompanying a final paper, in which this incident was the framework for an analysis of intercultural competency, sensitivity, and awareness, the stories tell of very personal encounters of US students either in the US or abroad, or international students in the US. They relate some of the painful and embarrassing, but also enjoyable and stimulating difficulties they have had adjusting and adapting to cultures that were other than their own.

In the Fall of 2009, Susanne Sutton, lecturer of German with the Modern Languages, Linguistics and Intercultural Communication Department (MLLI) taught an Advanced German 303 topics course, "German Immigration into the US".
As semester project, students worked on their own digital stories (in German) in which they recounted an experience they had had while having worked, studied, or vacationed abroad. Students then teamed up with first-generation German immigrant women from the larger Baltimore area.  Students and immigrants collaborated to produce the immigrants' personal digital stories during a two day workshop. At the end of the semester, after the students had finished the immigrants' stories, everyone came back for a 'story festival' to view the finished products.

Immigrant and Student Projects:

Student Projects:

In "Constructing the Samurai" students used digital story techniques to explore aspects of samurai culture through visual assignments. The honors class was taught by Professor Constantine Vaporis during the Fall 2009 semester. Here are the results:

Women's Role in Samurai Films - Samantha Larsen
Samurai Honor - Rebecca Walter
Recipe for a Samurai - Becca Reeves
Seppuku
Marriage and Gender Among Samurai in Tokugawa Japan - James Chrismer, Momoka Watanabe, Kazutomo Terada
Chushingura in Transition - Matthew Murphy
The Social Relationships of the Samurai - Sammantha Chin and Lara English
HIST 355 Final Project - Daniel Graham
Armor of the Samurai - Rachel and Angela
Bushido: The Way of the Warrior - David Baldwin
Progression of the Samurai
Fallen Cherry Blossoms- Kamikaze Pilots - Harsh Bambawale
Samurai in Games