Screenings, Workshops, Tutorials, oh my!

Jessica McCoy — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 22:34:22 +0000

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. :)

Flash drive fun!

Jessica McCoy — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 21:31:40 +0000

Hello everyone! Time for an update. I've been way way busy lately (I'm sure you all know how that feels). We just finished a weeklong workshop with middle schoolers at the Marin Youth Center's Computer Clubhouse. It was my first time in a computer clubhouse, they seem like a great idea! While I was there I learned a little about making beats using FruityLoops. Fun! But a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Right now the main things on my plate are working with Danielle and others on Stories for Change, a web portal for community-based digital storytelling facilitators. Danielle is head of the committee that's creating the site and I'm helping with content collection. We're getting close to launch so I've been extra busy gathering up resource materials, formatting them, and uploading to the site. It's a Drupal-based site so luckily the uploading is relatively simple. (someone else built the site, someone far techier than I am!)

Anyway it's been really eye-opening to see all the work that goes into planning a website. The site should be really great resource for anyone interested in using digital storytelling in their community work. I'll keep you posted on when we launch.

Other news:

--Fellow VISTAs Naomi Jimenez and Brittney Fosbrook came to CDS to do a digital storytelling workshop a few weeks ago. Yay! Hopefully they will post their stories on Blip.tv to share them. It was good to have a little VISTA reunion...I hope we can collaborate further on digital storytelling work with their organizations.

--I finally got an external hard drive to hold all my work! Thanks goodness. I've been having a lot of issues staying organized because there hasn't been one computer where I can work all the time. I'd been daydreaming about this portable drive from LaCie and voila! CDS came though and now I've got it in my hot little hands.

--Speaking of hard drives and such, we also just got two new flash drives to use in our workshops. They are super handy, especially since we often need to transfer files from machine to machine, Mac to PC, etc. We found these 2 gb flash drives for just $20, can't complain about that. What we do complain about is the way our flash drives tend to grow legs and walk away from our workshops. This time we've attached smurf keychains to the drives, we'll see if it makes them a little trickier to just stuff into your pocket. I ran across these other ideas for how to make USB flash drive modifications, seems like good clean CTC VISTA fun and an anti-theft measure, too. Maybe I can make one out of the VISTA robot?

Digital Arts Service Corps - stories for change

Screenings, Workshops, Tutorials, oh my!

Flash drive fun!