My friend in Santiago, Chile, Jo Rivas Albornoz, wrote to me after my Digital Storytelling lectures and workshop for English-language teachers at the Instituto Chileno Norteamericano: “I have worked using technology in the classroom; I have seen how technology is used by different teachers in several places. But this is something really powerful.”
“Why?!” I replied at once.
Jo explained:
I think Digital Storytelling is very powerful because it combines different things that engage students, especially teenagers.
Teens love to talk about themselves, they also love technology, so mixing both things is a very useful tool for teachers for keeping them motivated.
But what really makes me feel that it is very powerful is what you told me about the idea of your town’s museum. [CH: Pictures are ‘dead’ to the coming generations with stories attached.] I love to see my grandmother’s old photographs. When she was alive we always looked at her pictures and she told me some stories about them. She died some years ago. It would be very different now if I could show my children a video telling her stories herself. They almost don’t remember her.
You know that I hate pictures (I’m not photogenic at all), I feel that pictures take our soul away. But a video shows us as we are, listening to our voices, watching our gestures, is different. If you combine that in a story and add some other things like images, you could have a digital version of a person, her personality reflected in the way the story is told, the way the images are used, the intonation in the voice. IT IS POWERFUL, isn’t it?
These are Jo’s first digital story results. http://www.youtube.com/user/