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The ALSC’s Children and Technology Committee is interested in hearing about your experiences with incorporating digital resources, social media, and technology into your summer programming.  We looked around and found some great ideas from our colleagues around the country.

Tech Labs

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The Frederick County Public Libraries has STEM Lab, where children can drop in to learn about or use 3D printers, apps, robotic dinosaurs, or drones.  This is similar to Darien Library’s TEA Room, (TEA stands for Technology, Engineering, and the Arts).  There, students can reserve space to use media production equipment or take classes on Raspberry Pi, 3D Printing, etc.  These programs offer a nice balance of a space/time that is both free and unstructured or structured group projects and classes.

Tech Partnerships

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King County Library System in Washington State has partnered with the Museum of Flight during the summer to offer tech program s such as Everyday Robot Heroes Science Workshop, Yes, It’s Rocket Science Workshop  or Rockets to the Moon Science Workshop.  These programs teach children about robotics or rockets and then allow them to build their own.  King County was able to tie these programs into their main promotional theme of the summer: superheroes!

Digital Storytelling

Outside of using e-books and apps during storytimes, digital storytelling can also describe various programming opportunities to get our patrons using simple media production tools to create, record, and share their own stories.  The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has the award winning My Storymaker site that helps children build their own stories online.  Skokie Public Library has Digital Craft Time programs, with one group of classes for grades 1-3 and another group for grades 4-6. Topics include Photoshop elements, green screen photography, and Stop Motion Animation.  Speaking of stop motion animation, last month, our committee’s blog post was on creating short stop motion animation films using a free and super easy iPad app called Stop Motion Studio.  It might be a great fall back on a rainy summer day.  Kathy Schrock offers some insightful tips and suggestions for getting started or keeping up with digital storytelling.

Take It Home Technology

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What about technology that children and their families could check out, take home and do together?  Meridian Library District in Idaho has Make It Take It Kits that help families to build robots, learn about circuitry, and find projects for 3D printing.

Make Magazine as many people know is a treasure trove of programs and projects that can be adapted and modified to work in a library setting.  From high to low, ideas range from 3D printing to traditional lessons on woodworking.  The projects and video sections are a must.

So please, get the conversation started in the comments section. We want your suggestions on the following:

• What programs have you done or are you preparing using technology?
• What doesn’t work that well?
• Do you work with digital resources or social media during more traditional programming?
• Is anyone filming your puppet shows, creating podcasts of original works of readers’ theater, etc.?

Michael Santangelo is the Electronic Resources Coordinator at BookOps, the shared technical services department for the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library, and chair of the Children and Technology Committee.

The post From Dinosaur Robotics to Digital Storytelling: Incorporating Technology Into Summer Programming appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Some students want to write more than what is required of them in writing workshop. Enter independent writing projects! But how do you go from being another set of eyes on some additional writing a student does to helping him/her go public with their work?

Silence, interrogation, confession, chronology, and stories. The Oral History Review (OHR) Volume 41, Issue 1 is now online and coming to mailboxes soon, and along with it Alexander Freund’s article, “Confessing Animals”: Toward a Longue Durée History of the Oral History Interview.” OHR Editorial Board Member Erin Jessee spoke with the University of Winnipeg professor over his novel approach to the oral history interview. Below is a small excerpt from their conversation, with more to come soon.

Erin Jessee: I found your article very provocative (in the best possible way) and am eager to be a part of this dialogue. Perhaps an appropriate starting point for this email exchange would be for you to tell me about the story behind this article.

* * * * *

Alexander Freund: You are right: In the case of this article in particular, it makes sense to start with its genesis.

Ever since I conducted my first oral history interview in 1993, I have been surprised at how forthcoming many people are in telling their stories, including intimate details and “family secrets.” Originally I thought this was the result of my interviewing skills, but I also soon noticed some specific interviewing dynamics that I have found to be increasingly troubling. Silence was one of these dynamics. As interviewers, we remain silent to give our narrators space to reflect, reminisce, recall, and re-organize their memories. But silence makes people uncomfortable and they try to fill it with words. Even though I always told my interviewees to expect silences and not be alarmed by them, there were several instances when people told me information they had not planned on disclosing.

Sometime after 2000, I began to notice larger social phenomena in Canada and the United States that seemed to be shaped by similar dynamics. Storytelling, for example, became a big hype in all kinds of fields, from arts to therapy to business management. (Google ‘storytelling’ and you will be surprised by what you find.) From personal experience in participatory educational programs and documentaries, I saw that many of the group activities were intended to “liberate” participants from anonymity and social restrictions.

A few years ago, coincidence led me to Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. As soon as I hit the chapter “Scientia Sexualis,” all of my thoughts and concerns about interviewing and the storytelling craze of late came together and made sense. It was a real “Aha!” moment! I think every oral historian should read this short passage. I would be surprised if anyone with just a little bit of interviewing experience did not see the “interviewer” in Foucault’s description of the confessor-confessant relationship.

‘Storytelling’ by Jim Pennucci. CC BY 2.0 via pennuja Flickr.

As I write in the article, this is only the beginning of an exploration that our field needs to undertake as a whole. The article raises more questions than it can answer. The question that currently intrigues me the most is the rise of public confession since the end of the Cold War and the rise of the Internet. There seems to be an insatiable desire, not just in the West and not just among the young, to share one’s most intimate experiences and feelings with the world. Much of this is driven by the digital technology and media industries that profit from this new demand for public confession.

But why is it important for oral historians to critically examine and understand this culture?

First, much of this culture draws on the generic term “storytelling” to somehow give it legitimacy and credibility. Oral historians have increasingly begun to use the term storytelling to describe their practice. And vice versa, a great range of storytelling projects and products have described their practices as oral history. There is, no doubt then, the opportunity to conflate all of these different practices of “storytelling.” In the multi-billion dollar market of “storytelling,” however, oral history is bound to come out at the losing end. This is not about excluding people from oral history, but rather to insist on the importance of our best practices.

Second, and this is even more important, we now live in a culture of “digital storytelling” and similar cultural practices. We may think that as oral historians we are worlds apart from the examples above, but except for the higher production values of multi-million dollar outfits like television stations, we use the same tools and technologies: interviews, audio and video recorders, online dissemination platforms like YouTube. Furthermore, we share (or at least appear to share) the underlying assumption that to help people “put it out there” is somehow good.

I am not a defeatist. I simply argue that learning more about the long history of our instruments and methods will help us better understand and appreciate our own accomplishments, continue to be critical of our methods, and enable us to resist the vortex of confessional culture and the storytelling industry. I would be interested to hear how things are playing out in the regions of the world you are familiar with. For example, how does storytelling and other confessional practices figure into the memorialization and commemoration of the genocides you have studied?

* * * * *

Erin Jessee: To be honest, one of the challenges I’ve been having with this exchange is how to talk about some of the experiences I’ve had and encounters I’ve observed as an oral historian in different settings. I’d shifted from forensic archaeology to oral history and anthropology precisely because I became aware of the violence that could be done to communities in the official pursuit of justice – typically defined in relation to Canadian or international criminal law. With few exceptions, it seemed that the needs of communities in the aftermath of mass violence were often subsumed to the need for justice. In the process, tools like forensic exhumations and international criminal trials became yet another form of violence in the everyday lives of these communities.

I’m reminded of a talk I recently attended given by Amy Tooth Murphy at the Scottish Oral History Centre. She was discussing chrononormativity as a source of discomposure in her work with women in the LGBTQ community. In brief, she found that her efforts to adhere to a life history interview format that moved chronologically from past to present created a narrative rupture between the lives these women had lived and the heteronormative society that surrounded them. It also created uncomfortable silences between the heteronormative ideals they adhered to in public and the lesbian relationships they engaged in in private.

I’ve observed similar discomposure in working with genocide survivors in places like Rwanda and Bosnia, where when faced with the option of moving chronologically through their life history people become mute. The prospect of starting their narratives with their childhood experiences – often positively recalled in relation to the mass violence that followed – can be very painful as it reminds them of what has been lost and inevitably sets the stage for a difficult interview experience for the interviewee. Over time, I learned to abandon the chronological interview format and began starting interviews with open-ended questions like “Tell me about yourself” or “Tell me about your life.” Provided with the option of starting their narratives anywhere they chose and working through their experiences in their own terms, people seemed far more comfortable with the interview experience. And while I’d hesitate to say that any catharsis was achieved, the interview experience appeared to be more positive for my interviewees, though it certainly makes the process of analysis, and the creation of narratives that Westerners would recognize as “good storytelling” more complicated.

* * * * *

To be continued…

Alexander Freund is a professor of history and holds the Chair in German-Canadian Studies at the University of Winnipeg, where he is also co-director of the Oral History Centre. He is co-president of the Canadian Oral History Association and co-editor of Oral History Forum d’histoire orale. With Alistair Thomson, he edited Oral History and Photography (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). He is the author of “Confessing Animals”: Toward a Longue Durée History of the Oral History Interview” (available to read for free for a limited time) in the latest issue of the Oral History Review.

Erin Jessee, in addition to serving on the OHR Editorial Board, is an assistant professor affiliated with the Scottish Oral History Centre (Department of History) at the University of Strathclyde. Her research interests include mass atrocities, nationalized commemoration, spiritual violence, transitional justice, mass grave exhumations, and the ethical and methodological challenges surrounding qualitative fieldwork amid highly politicized research settings. Erin is in the final stages of writing a book manuscript (under consideration with Palgrave MacMillan’s Studies in Oral History series) tentatively titled Negotiating Genocide: The Politics of History in Post-Genocide Rwanda.

The Oral History Review, published by the Oral History Association, is the U.S. journal of record for the theory and practice of oral history. Its primary mission is to explore the nature and significance of oral history and advance understanding of the field among scholars, educators, practitioners, and the general public. Follow them on Twitter at @oralhistreview, like them on Facebook, add them to your circles on Google Plus, follow them on Tumblr, listen to them on Soundcloud, or follow their latest OUPblog posts via email or RSS to preview, learn, connect, discover, and study oral history.

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The post ‘Storytelling’ in oral history: an exchange appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Title: Storehouse
Cost: Free
Platform: iOS

Storify is one of my favorite tools on the web – the app is a little glitchy – for taking content (images, videos, Tweets, etc.) and putting them together into a story. Storehouse takes a similar approach and gives users the chance to combine text with images and video in order to create a tale about a topic of interest.

For teens the Storehouse apps is a great way for them to take those images and videos that they take on a device that’s in their pocket or under their arm, and turn them into something that helps to tell about their lives, places they’ve been, events they’ve participated in, and so on. It’s a great tool for giving teens the chance to go beyond the image to the story behind the image.

The app is pretty simple to use. The first step is to tap on the + icon on the top right. That opens up the screen for adding images and videos that are either stored in your iPad photo library or in Dropbox or on Instagram. (Teens will have to connect your Dropbox and Instagram accounts to Storehouse if they are going to import photos from those services.)

When the library that’s going to be used is open, the next step is to tap on the images or videos that will be used for the Storehouse story and they are quickly added to the story in progress.

Then, just give the story a title, Storehouse will select a cover image for the story but it’s easy to change that. And, it’s possible to crop images at any time too.

The images are imported into the story in the order in which they were selected, but once agein it’s easy to drag them around to put them into the order you want.

At the top of the screen is a button for adding text and a button for adding new media. If you select the text button teens can add either a header, “normal” text, or a quote. I do have to say this is where I got confused. The text is always entered above the photos that have been imported. Here’s the trick. Once text is added, the photos need to be dragged to where they should appear in the story – above or below a particular piece of text – and that creates the flow of the story. It’s easy to do once it’s clear what is required.

At any time in the process the story can be saved as a draft. Even if the story is published it’s possible to go back and add or change images, videos, or text. Once a story is published it’s can be shared on Facebook, Twitter or via email. Unfortunately, Storehouse stories can’t be embedded into web pages. That’s a feature that teens would probably like to see so that they can add them to Tumblr and other websites easily.

Here’s a video from Storehouse on how the app works.

Teens have lots of stories to tell related to the videos and images that they take on devices. Let them know how they can use Storehouse to do just that.

Two of the sessions I attended at NCTE in Boston helped me think about ways two digital tools could be meaningfully integrated into early childhood and elementary school classrooms to engage young writers. The "Exploring Collaboration of Multimodal Literacies in Early Childhood: Digital Filmmaking, Designing, and Co-Authoring" panel discussed the way digital video cameras could enhance learning, while two of the presenters in "Writing Workshop Is for All Students: Using Visuals, Oral Language, and Digital Tools to Maximize Success and Independence for English Language Learners" suggested the incorporation of digital cameras.

Canberra writer and entrepreneur Ellen Harvey has launched a new global platform for writers who can cope with word limits. The drabbl.es website, which is live but in alpha testing, invites visitors to create 100 word stories in one of dozens of subject areas, from journalism to crime and chick lit to biography. It’s an addictive format, and one that will appeal to writers of all genres and experience levels. Ellen took time out from her busy schedule to answer some questions about drabbling and literary start-up life for Boomerang Books. 

How and when did you come up with the idea for drabbl.es? 

The idea for drabbl.es came about as I was thinking of a way to write, collect, share and get others to do the same with 100 word stories. My writing group at the time loved the idea and I would give them ‘homework’ tasks to write 100 words around a certain theme. I wanted to read their drabbles, and they wanted to read other people’s drabbles too. Drabbles have been around for a while, the term originating from Monty Python, and are quite popular on online blogging platforms such as Livejournal. At the end of 2011, my husband, Lachlan Blackhall, and I were having a conversation about how to make this 100-word story-sharing website a reality. It was then that drabbl.es really started to take form, including many features and improvements that we can’t wait to implement on the website in future versions.

How long have you yourself been writing drabbles?

I have been writing drabbles since I was 14 and sharing them with friends via email and online blogging.

What’s your day job? 

My day job is split into three segments really: I’m a writer working on my first manuscript. I also started a company with my sister this year called BnE Media (www.bnemedia.com) where we create animated storybook apps for children. And of course, I work on drabbl.es.

And your dream job?

This is pretty much the dream. I am able to travel while working, I am able to write full-time, and I am able to work on interesting projects.

How many of you are involved in the project and what are the key roles?

As mentioned earlier, my husband is a key member of this project. He works with many start-up companies and is the ideal partner to have for this website. Plus, it’s great fun to be working on something with Lachlan. David Elliot and his team at Agile Digital are amazing–they worked tirelessly to make sure we had demos for workshops and a working version to begin this first trial in October.

How long has it taken to get the site up and running?

The idea was developed into a working website early in the year, and we were able to secure our developers (Agile Digital) in April. In six months, we have been able to start our first trial.

Now that drabbl.es is live, how much work is involved in running and promoting the site?

It’s actually a lot more work than I thought. Running a website, especially one in the early stages, means that I read 95% of all the drabbles. Drabbles are then randomly picked to be ‘promoted’ on social media, as well as advertising our challenges on social media so users know there are new ones. Running a trial, in particular, means I sort through feedback results and am constantly updating the development strategy for the next version. It definitely keeps me busy – but I love it all the same. It’s a new experience that I wouldn’t get anywhere else.

When do you anticipate leaving alpha stage and launching proper?

We plan to have the alpha trial running until the end of January (although we may continue into February). The site will still be live after that, but behind the scenes we’ll start working on the beta version. We’ll then release the next version and collect feedback. I love the idea of an evolving website that is exactly what its users want. After the beta trial and redevelopment, I think we’ll launch the proper version.

Will there be iOS and Android apps for drabbl.es?

I certainly hope so! To me, drabbling is definitely something that can be done on the run. You can be at a concert and write about the song you just heard; you can be watching the New Year’s Eve fireworks and describe the atmosphere; you can take a picture and explain what it means to you right then and there while still being in the moment.

Why should people post to drabbl.es rather than Facebook or Twitter or their own Tumblr/blog?

Drabbl.es allows people to tell stories. That is our aim. We want to read about a moment in someone’s life and feel as if we experienced it with them. Drabbl.es is about connections. Facebook and Twitter statuses have developed to the point where they are often used to talk about a very specific moment, but once the moment is over, the update or tweet is often no longer relevant. We want drabbles to have longevity and to mean something a week, a month, a year, a decade after it’s published. Tumblrs and blogs allow users to write as much as they want–we want to encourage creativity by having the word restriction.

Might we see drabbl.es anthologies in ebook form in the future?

It is definitely something that we’ve thought about. Possibly as a way to deliver drabbles daily, weekly or monthly to users interested in particular genres or users. Almost like a newsletter, but hopefully delivered straight to your eReader. That being said, we’ve also thought about users able to export their drabbles straight to ePub/mobi and upload to the various stores themselves. It’s something we’ve thought about, but still a little while off from implementing.

How will you deal with copyright issues ie does the writer retain copyright and what if you were to publish a book, would you have to ask for permission?

Writers always retain copyright. As a writer myself, this is something I feel very strongly about. When they post on the website, the work is always theirs. If we were to publish a book, we would ask the users for permission.

What about moderating the drabbles to ensure nothing defamatory or racist etc is posted, is that a big job? 

Currently, our users are wonderful and don’t make it a very big job. I imagine it may turn into one, though. Our website is only as good as the users on it, so I hope that our users will alert us to anything they think we should check out, in addition to our own moderation.

What’s the end goal and how will you make money/pay for the site?

Ideally, and it’s a big dream, I’d love drabbl.es to be on the Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook stage–something people do for fun, but is totally addictive. Regarding making money, we believe the site can make money in two ways. Firstly, sponsored challenges are a logical step. The challenges are already part of drabbl.es functionality and with our view that drabbl.es can be written about events and experiences, then having drabbl.es host challenges for other companies seems reasonable and something the drabbl.es community would do because they are already using the challenges section of the website. The second way is by creating levels of paid users. There will always be a user type that is free and without advertising, but if they want more functionality, such as linking drabbles together or adding more than one picture to a drabble for example, they would need to pay for their account.

How did you come up with the extensive list of drabbl.es subjects? Can contributors suggest more?

I searched for writing genres on Google and came up with a multitude of sites that declared they had the best list of writing genres. I ended up just picking the one I like the best and started with that. The list is a work in progress and I would love for users to suggest more.

What other online forums exist for posting drabbles ie what’s your competition?

A wave of citizen journalism sites have cropped up in the last year and I feel that this is probably our major competition. They all allow their users to add pictures, follow other users, get email updates, comment and socialise on the websites. What’s more, they all promote that their site is about storytelling. Despite this, I know that our concept and website is strong because our 100 word restriction on the stories is a challenge (and an addictive one at that) which only enhances and promotes creativity.

Well – see what happens when a summer project turns into a fall release the name of the show has changed. Early release woudl have been better I guess. This is part 2 of the course.

Over the few months I will be releasing the video version of this email course available now on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf

I promise that I send you the seven emails about storytelling over the next ten days or so and that in addition I will send you Announcement about storytelling workshops or activities I am organizing nationally or locally – but never more then two a month if that.

Eric Wolf

Well – see what happens when a summer project turns into a fall release the name of the show has changed. Early release woudl have been better I guess. This is part 2 of the course.

Over the few months I will be releasing the video version of this email course available now on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf

I promise that I send you the seven emails about storytelling over the next ten days or so and that in addition I will send you Announcement about storytelling workshops or activities I am organizing nationally or locally – but never more then two a month if that.

Eric Wolf

Last summer I pushed for the recording of important sessions of the National Storytelling Network’s (NSN) 2008 Conference I was recording my session on the future of storytelling online for this podcast. I figured why not do a little more? I exhausted myself and recorded the membership session and the regional NSN rep session. These recording are the property of NSN. Unluckily I work for myself like most artists and it took me two months to edit the work – then having finished it - I promptly forgot about it. Finally in November I got my copies to the NSN board. Jo Radner, the NSN board chair was very excited about getting some key sessions recorded. I got the feeling the board would have liked faster service – but you know the old saying you get what you pay for and I was free.

Others recorded the Keynotes and the Master storytellers concert. I don’t know what happened to these files. I’m sure the NSN got a copy of them somewhere. The master storytellers performance - Doc McConnell’s last performance - was almost not recorded! I saw the volunteer putting his equipment away before the performance, and when I asked why, I was told by NSN volunteers that the storytellers would never agreed to their work being recorded.

So I walked up to each storyteller and asked them for permission to record their performance “for NSN” with any other uses to be worked out later. They all said yes with a great deal of passion and Doc McConnell said we could do anything NSN wanted with his recording. I’m sure I was too pushy for bystanders

The reality is that storytelling has an advantage over other art forms, because new work is always being created. We all have material that we have not performed in years. We all have stories that were once primary to our performance, but now no longer capture our attention. What if all of that material was still available? Mostly I try to downplay storytellers’ fears by asking this one question: Reframing the whole debate… Do you want to be a part of the historical record?

That is how I would frame this debate over recording conference sessions.

Five years from now if this material is available will it still matter to you? Won’t you be on to other things? Wouldn’t it be nice to have this historical moment recorded? The question is not “Do we record our conference sessions?” The question really is ”When do we release our conference sessions? One year? Two years? Five years from now?”

The storytelling skill set is timeless – the skills and abilities we have today will not, unlike computers, internet or blogging, become old fashioned – they are ageless. I personally know that the storytelling movement has a lot to offer the world and think it’s time we stepped up to the plate to offer our skills. NSN or any other national organization could be the vehicle for that delivery. Who ever builds a content delivery system around the art of storytelling first will win that race and be the source for the international storytelling movement for the next twenty years. My website www.storytellingwithchildren.com is well on the way to being the source for all things relating to storytelling with children, but what about storytelling with seniors, in business, marketing, or any of a dozen different topics that I have not had time or resources to cover in the depth that should be covered?

NSN could be so much more then a network, using it’s conference it could bring the separate candles of the storytelling community into a bright light that would shine forth across the world.

Eric Wolf

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Writer of Children’s Stories 23%
Semi-professional Storyteller 20%
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Storytelling Coach 16%
Faith Based Storyteller 15%

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