Arriving back from Pongal break last week, Ilana and I jumped into a long task list in our final push to complete projects and classes. We took the Railway girls on a field trip to the Google office in Hi-Tec City and had our last class and celebration with the boy at APRS. The students at Railway and Sultan Bazaar have been working hard to finalize their videos, and we’ll have screenings and celebrations with them tomorrow and Monday.

Before all the Hyderabad hubbub, though, I completed TMS workshops at Communities Rising in Tamil Nadu, and also had a final screening and celebration there. I am proud of the projects the students created in such a short time frame, so this morning I’m taking a few minutes to share them here.

At Communities Rising I worked with three different sets of students. The first video was envisioned and produced by Siva, a participant in the staff workshop I conducted. Siva is a computer teacher at CR’s after-school program in Periathachoor village. The video addresses the issues of fear and corporal punishment in schools and will be used by CR as a tool for promoting positive disciplinary tactics. Siva made both an English and Tamil version of his project.

Fear (Bayam) from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

As Ilana and I have experienced in our other classes, having a committed local teacher involved with TMS activities exponentially improves our effectiveness as digital storytelling instructors, both because of translation and the ability for the youth involved to continue learning when our program ends. After his own training, Siva played a crucial role assisting me as I taught photography, video, and editing skills to two groups of children in the Periathachoor after-school program. All of the equipment and software we used belongs to CR, and I know that Siva will continue guiding his young students through creative video projects in the coming months.

In the two projects below I created lesson plans that focused on practicing English skills while learning digital technology. My goal was to provide a model for meeting two of CR’s educational objectives–they emphasize literacy, math, English and computer skills–in an engaging way.

The following video shows two of five emotion dramas performed and filmed by 6th through 8th class students.

Emotions from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

The next video focuses on the English alphabet. Fourth and fifth class students explored letters visually with the cameras and verbally by reading on film.

ABC Movie from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Communities Rising’s college volunteers created the final three videos, in which they discuss their life experiences and perspectives on CR’s role in education for youth in rural India.

Fire at Communities Rising from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

An Engineer from a Village from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Education at Communities Rising from The Modern Story on Vimeo.