Telling the Story

November 14th, 2006

One of the most interesting aspects of the digital story telling project has been the connections my 87 year old gradfather has made with his past. As part of this project, I was conducting some initial research into the London Street my grandfather grew up on. I came across a query left on an ancestry.com. The query was from a woman who had lived at the same address as my gradfather, now living in Canada. I emailed a message from my grandfather and it turned out that the woman grew up in the flat opposite my grandfather and was the niece of my grandfather’s best freind. My grandfather is now in touch with the family again. Photographs of the street they grew up in were sent to me via email, these connections with my grandfather’s past are important triggers for his memories and stories.

Social Softwares such as ancestry dot com and myspace have been extremely useful in bringing together people with shared interests and histories. The great thing about the internet is the connectivity which has helped to bring together my grandfather’s story and links with his past. I have found there is an increase in interest of older people on YouTube such as a 94 year old WWII serviceman based in Japan after WWII or similarily Geriatric1927 who has over 30,000 subscribers to his stories about the second WWII and other issues for the day.

My grandfather is now interested in doing some recording for youtube, so stay tuned for more older people on youtube or producing content for video ipods.

Stories seem to be a way in which we report to one another on the events of life. We don’t need machines to do that . We need individual opinion and perspective.
Meadow MS (2003) Pause and Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative.

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Filming and Photographs for Digital Stories

October 6th, 2006

I have now  successfully digitalised several hours of video footage of my grandfather telling his history. I recorded this on miniDV. Out of the approximately 180 mins of footage I have only used around 18 mins on the website.

The first digital video recording of my grandfather took about 40minutes however, when it came to editing this footage I found I had recorded the footage in Long Play. This was not compatible with the equipment I used to import the footage into iMovie. I recommend filming only in Short Play (SP).  I found imovie very simple and easy to use. I was able to save edited footage into a webstreaming format thus reducing the size of the videos which allows for fast uploading on the website. I found the aiatsis guideline useful in deciding how to record my grandfathers story  http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/2321/av_materials.pdf

I believe that the combination of video, photo and audio files works well on the site. The video footage could have been edited further to make it more engaging by adding photographs and music rather that a 2-3 minutes of my grandfather talking however, one of the problems I found when I did try to insert photos and other images into the footage was the sycronisation was out and made the footage appear disjointed. I  only added sound to one of the videos of my grandfather talking.

I scanned several relevant photos of my gradfather’s and with his permission placed them on the website. I edited the photos in photoshop which was easy to use. Overall, my experince with filming, editing and working with digital photos rather rewarding and exciting for both myself and grandfather. These elements are essential to any digital storytelling website.

Digital Storytelling is the intersection between the age- old art of storytelling and access to powerful technology that is easy to learn and use. Stories have been used throughout history and by all cultures to pass on important knowledge. With the advent of affordable digital video cameras, easy to use software, DVDs, and the Internet we can now tell, capture and disseminate our stories in new ways and to a broader population.

Teaching Teachers Website 2006

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Recording my Grandfather’s Stories

September 1st, 2006

North Africa 1942

Today I presented a small project pitch which is going to be a digital story of my grandfather’s oral history, his experience of WWII and growing up in London in the 1930’s. I am going to develop a website for his stories, the contributing factor to this is accessibility. My cousins are widely dispirsed around the globe and would be interesetd in their gradfather’s stories as well. Rather than posting off a christmas DVD it was decided a website would be more or less free and easily accessible by many family members rather than the DVD.

In order to get my 87 year old grandfather to talk and open up about his history, I decided to visit him over a period of 6 weeks. For the first 2 weeks I held very general conversations with my grandfather and asked him to tell me about his life on these visits I decided to only record him on minidisc, to gauge how comfortable he would be at telling his history and how open to being recorded he was. To my suprise he was a very willing participant. I decided to record on a good broadcast quality digital device in case these recordings could be of further use outside of the immediate project. I then played back the mindisc via my laptop computer, and digitised them with a program called Sound Forge.

I have used Sound Forge before and have found it very simple to use to edit audio files, quickly and easily. Out of the 2 hours I have only used 6 mins on the digital story website. Care was taken in recording as I wanted to be able to maybe save the recordings for future use and possiblily be able to lodge them with a digital library.

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The Puzzle Pirates

August 25th, 2006

One of the things that I have found fascinating is the number of online gamers!!!! Puzzle Pirates states that Every activity in Puzzle Pirates is a quick fun game, from commanding a fleet of warships, to pumping the bilge out of one! And with thousands of fellow pirates about there’s always friends for a hand of cards, a friendly swordfight or a rowdy drink! Look forward to that then me hearties. Can’t wait to start playing…Puzzle Pirates

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Digital Story Telling

August 18th, 2006

This week possible worlds is on digital story telling according to Leslie Rule from the Digital Storytelling Association “Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. Digital stories derive their power by weaving images, music, narrative and voice together, thereby giving deep dimension and vivid color to characters, situations, experiences, and insights. “

I’m very excited about the use of the internet in the whole process of digital story telling, especially in the area of family histories and have decided to undertake a project on my grandfathers stories. What I find interesting is how you can link images, sound, text, video and hyperlinks to give a broader picture other than the tradional oral history. The internet as a form of delivery allows family members that maybe dispired globaly to feel connected via what is in some sences a very peronal website. However I’m concerned that digital story telling is often very personal in nature and may not be neccessarily interesting or engaging for others outside of my immediate family. A site I am finding  useful for the project has been the digital storytelling centre which has a cookbook page which has been useful in putting together my project. http://www.storycenter.org/cookbook.html Another useful site has been the University of Minnesota Institute for New Media Studies elements of digital storytelling describing the elements of good digital story. The site will tell a linear narrative and is what Lev Manovich in The Language of New Media 2001 would describe as a new media object.

I am reading a book from the City Library called  Ten Pound Poms” Australia’s Invisible Migrants by A.James Hammerton and Alistair Thomson. It is an overview of the experiences of British migrants to Australia after the WWII which where given a trip to Australia for 10 pounds, over 1 million British people migrated to Australia.                    

         

    

  

 

 

 

 

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