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Videos

Feb, 4

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TMS Fellow Updates, Videos

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Sultan Bazaar School Final Videos

Twenty-four hours and several Bollywood films after leaving Hyderabad, Ilana and I landed safely at JFK airport in New York City today. We still have lots to write about our final weeks in India, though, so you’ll keep hearing from us here. One important thing we have to share are our students’ wonderful final projects! The first batch comes from our pilot program at Sultan Bazaar Government Girls High School, in collaboration with the American India Foundation.

Our class at Sultan Bazaar involved small groups of teachers and students working together to learn digital technology skills and create multimedia projects that could enhance their learning/teaching experiences in regular curriculum subjects. As you will see in the videos below, this format proved to be an effective and accessible way to introduce such digital tools to participants unfamiliar with cameras or computers.

Ilana and I are excited to have been part of developing this model in TMS’s work and truly looking forward to see how TMS builds on our work in the next year. For now, enjoy this first series of curriculum-focused projects created by TMS students!

Cotton Project from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

 

Natural Resources Project from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

 

Triangle Project from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Jan, 28

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TMS Fellow Updates, Videos

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Final Videos from Communities Rising Workshops

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.

Jan, 2

2

TMS Fellow Updates, Videos

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The Modern Story Ventures South!

Happy New Year from Tamil Nadu! While Ilana headed north over the holidays I traveled west to Mumbai and then south to visit an another education organization, Communities Rising. CR runs after-school programs in villages of Tamil Nadu’s Villupuram district. They work especially with Dalit children, and tonight I had the great opportunity to hear a presentation by a Dalit priest and lobbyist. I listened eagerly and asked many questions, as caste discrimination is an issue that hasn’t come up easily in conversations in Andhra Pradesh. I’ve wanted to learn more about the topic but wasn’t sure how to approach it, so that is party of why I came to visit CR.

While I’m here I’ve also been holding video workshops with some of CR’s great college students who volunteer in the after-school program. One of those students, Agni, has already completed editing a project in which he talks about CR’s work and his experiences with the organization. Check it out!

Fire at Communities Rising from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Dec, 30

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Photo Stories, Videos

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“How to Draw” and other mini-projects by APRS boys

In early December our APRS class worked on a documentary about food at their school and the right to food in India. We’ll show you the finished project in January. While part of the class focused on editing their work in Final Cut Express under Ilana’s guidance, I encouraged some of the others to practice the stop-motion animations we had learned earlier in the semester. Since it had previously been difficult for them to understand that they should only move their drawings small amounts with each frame, this time I tried the method of animation with chalk drawings. The boys set up the tripod, and I demonstrated by drawing a cloud, taking a photo, drawing a raindrop, taking another photo, drawing another raindrop, and repeating. Art lovers that they are, they took my simple example and elaborated with more clever ones. The first series demonstrates their talents with letters and calligraphy:

APRS Letters and Calligraphy from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

The second series is a set of “how-to” drawings:

APRS Drawing Lessons from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Additionally, some of the students who only joined the class recently took this time to practice making video slide shows. The boys love Windows Movie Maker’s array of transition and video effects, as you’ll see in Saleem’s project below. The photos are from a day when they practiced filming scenes from their favorite films. Thanks for watching!

APRS Video Production from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Dec, 13

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Daily Updates, Photo Stories, Student Writing, Videos

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Exploring religion and mysticism in rural India using digital media skills

Arbani, a student in our 9th grade class at Nalgonda has been working on an illustrated story all semester. He wanted to demonstrate the first installment. Arbani attends an all Muslim boys school on the extreme outskirts of Hyderabad in a small town called Nalgonda. He wanted to explore issues of religion and mysticism in rural India.

In this short story, notice how the student uses nature as a setting for the crossover between Christian and Muslim faiths to occur. Reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘On Nature’ may provide the reader with a poetic introduction: “in the woods is perpetual youth.” Arbani sees nature as the proper setting for religions to renew themselves and to mix together through mischief and economic need.  His story lives in the rural woodlands. It emphasizes what Emerson implied but never stated, that in the woods is perpetual wonder. I hope you enjoy this short piece. You will notice a marked difference in their ability to write with an individual voice and produce original ideas. This student has done so with success and many more are to follow. The enchanted wood of childhood not yet reduced to lumber.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGLOn08r5o0]

Below is a copy of the script.

Once upon a time there was a village. In olden days there was a forest in the village.

In the village there was living a magician. One day the magician was going to the forest. Suddenly he saw two devils by the church. He took a bottle and caught the two devils. He was a very brave man. He caught the devil, who is not one man but two, and put him in the bottle. The devil said please open the bottle cap. The magician said I don’t open bottle caps…you would escape. The magician said I need so much money, I need spirit, I need a show. I’ll put on a magic show.

The magician made the devils his assistant and performed a show in the church. After, the magician took them and went to the devil’s home safely.

The devils are very powerful. The devils broke the bottle and escaped. The devils will is the magician’s will. The devils are happy. The magician is sad. Hear him cry at the mosque, at the muezzin, *his call to prayer.

*Note: Arbani also considered this for his last line:

“Hear him cry at the mosque, at the meuzzin, being alone is also his call to prayer.”

Dec, 6

2

Classroom News, Daily Updates, Videos

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Spoken Word Poetry. Our girls deliver!

The Modern Story students at the Railway Girls School have been busy with the creative aspects of their film. As a teacher in this program, I wanted to ensure that the girls voices’ and stories are given ample time for growth and expression. As digital video curriculum programs elsewhere acknowledge, the largest amount of time spent for a video project should be on the creative aspects. Our girls can write. Their humor, strength and absolutely adorable mischief shows through in their first set of spoken word poems dealing with women empowerment.

We will soon be facing the giant challenge of tackling limited working computers, viruses, power outages, and short class time precluding sufficient post production editing. However, with these strong poems and beautiful videos I am confident that The Modern Story is already succeeding in bringing these girls’ voices to the fore of their community as they reflect on local issues that are felt across the globe. This has been an immensely rewarding experience so far and I hope others get to share in the project’s goals and activities in the future.

Check out the video below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVoDLTlzkwU]

Also, for those interested, friends of ours at The Cairo Human Rights Film Festival, run by Dalia Ziada are about to launch their exciting series of events. Check them out if you are in the area: http://www.cairofilm.org/

Dec, 3

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Classroom News, Daily Updates, TMS Fellow Updates, Videos

Leading up to the Social Justice Unit – Women Empowerment

As Fellows, we were recently given the exciting opportunity to read over The Modern Story’s Social Justice Curriculum. The Modern Story Social Justice Unit was created using resources from The Liberation Curriculum Initiative of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. We will begin implementing the curriculum soon. But before we begin, the girls wanted to do a video on issues they felt concerned them more immediately before expanding to broader issues of social justice and non-violence.  The issue at the top of the list is Women Empowerment. The best researched and presented film topic was done by Spandana who pitched many women-oriented ideas to the class.

When students at The Modern Story chose Women Issues as the subject for their first film, Vidya and I responded by selecting a clip discussing the subject, gathered student responses, and brought the students into conversation with the film. In this film clip Kavita Ramdas, head of the Global Fund for Women, is asked a couple questions related to the issues facing women today. Harini responds to the first question about why women issues should be discussed and Spandana lists one issue she thinks is facing women locally – dowry deaths.

We have begun contacting local leaders in the non-profit, social service and government sectors for ideas and potential interviews as we approach the time for implementing the Social Justice curriculum. Stay tuned.

As the girls look toward making their own videos we put together a short clip that encourages young girls to watch movies actively instead of passively by paying attention to moving images, still images, color, sound and camera angles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKcZvkfJBBk

Mar, 21

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Videos

Virtual Gallery Tour!

Hi Folks,

For those of you who could not make it to San Francisco for The Modern Story’s show at Zeum, we created a virtual gallery for you to walk through and look at the photos, as well as watch the videos.

For a larger version, visit: http://www.vuvox.com/collage/detail/0fb585dd6

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.798835&w=425&h=350&fv=collageID%3D0fb585dd6%26fullScreen%3Dtrue%26canEdit%3Dtrue]


Note:  When you click on the computer screen to watch the movies, a new window will pop-up for you to watch the video.  To return to the gallery, simply close the video window.

Jan, 25

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Reflections, Videos

A New Year

Hello again, after a winter holiday hiatus! Dave and I took the chance to see other parts of India during the two schools’ winter vacations. I think both of us saw far more foreign tourists in some of our destinations than we have during the months we have spent in Hyderabad! However, I think we both had nice, relaxing trips and met some interesting people along the way. We look forward to sharing stories about our travels in the next coming weeks!

We will recommence our classes starting tomorrow, so both APRS and Vijaynagar Colony will begin to work on their final videos. We are still working on getting complete translations and subtitles for the news video from Vijaynagar Colony but will have their news video about street traffic and child labor up for you to enjoy very soon. In the meantime, here is a short clip from a visit we took to the Girl’s Railway HS in Secunderabad. When we first arrived in Hyderabad, we attended a blind chess competition and befriended a group of girls who were there to draw and sing. This enthusiastic crowd gave us their school address and urged us to visit, so visit we did, and received a very warm welcome! The marching band wasn’t for us, haha, but we were lucky enough to catch them rehearsing for a news crew that was coming the next day to do a story on them. It looks like we beat the news crew to the chase and got footage of these great musicians first
The school principal told us that this is the only all girl’s marching band in all of India, since the few schools that do have music programs mostly focus on the boys. Being a former hardcore “band geek” myself, I was ecstatic to see all these young women in full force, and hope that they will continue to pursue interests that may not be as common for women in their communities. One young woman we were speaking with told us that she wanted to become a politician. I have not only worked with students here in India, but high school students from the west side of Chicago and students at a summer program for gifted and talented high schoolers, and she is the first young person I have met that has so enthusiastically expressed their interest to be part of a profession that may have picked up a negative stigma. Speaking to this girl was a great sign to me, for young people to realize that in order to create positive change, we need to have intelligent, strong, compassionate leaders in charge. Perhaps one day I will open the newspaper and find India’s new prime minister to be the girl we spoke to.

[youtube=http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q7aSbUPrIU]