Screenings, Workshops, Tutorials, oh my!

Hello hello fellow VISTAs!
Time for a quick summer update. Mmmmm summer...it's a good thing!
So this week we have two digital storytelling workshops going on. The first one is focused specifically for educators, and though I'm not involved in teaching it, I have been working hard to get some new software quick guides put together. It seems like there's an infinite number of software tutorials you can write to support digital storytelling. I've helped with tutorials for Final Cut Express, Photoshop Elements, file management, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, Audacity, Premiere, and Sound Studio. And there's a still a few more in the works. All of them will be posted (eventually) to the Stories for Change web portal that Danielle and I have been working on. All y'all who are doing digital storytelling with your organization, check out the site and post your students' stories! And of course any resources you have. Since the site just launched, we're working to get more people signed on and posting.

Also this week we have community screenings for two workshops I helped facilitate. The first workshop was place-based digital storytelling with middle school students, and the second was with Latina high school girls in a leadership development program. I'm hoping to get the stories posted to the net soon...need to get all the releases signed first! I'm looking forward to the screenings, since it will be the first time the participants will show off their work to family and friends.

The other good news is that my organization finally hired two people to help with administrative and postproduction tasks, which is awesome because it frees me up to do work that's more inline with my original workplan. Yay! It's great because they are both basically doing more capacity building work too, just in different areas than I am. And as a small nonprofit, we can use all the capacity-building help we can get. :)