Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Meet the Storytellers

For our first assignment in Ozarks Folklore, the students were paired up with a classmate. They were to create a 1-2 minute biographical video about their partner. The goal was to familiarize the students with the equipment before they begin their first digital stories about the Ozarks. Below are the results.

Jesse Davison from Zachary Hamby on Vimeo.




Friday, September 9, 2011

Our Storytelling Tools

Since our project is digital storytelling, we will use a variety of technology to complete it.  Some of our equipment includes the following:  Flip cameras, lapel microphones, digital cameras, flash drives, digital voice recorders, a scanner, a printer, and a classroom set of laptops.  The film-making software we will be using is Adobe Premiere 9.  All this technology is made possible by a grant from the Community Foundation of the Ozarks and the Dora R-III School Foundation.  Thank you to our sponsors!

Dora Digital Stories

Dora High School received a $20,000 grant from the Community Foundation of the Ozarks to sponsor a course entitled Ozarks Folklore. Our classroom has a variety of technology on-hand for our use. Our goal is to create a series of short documentaries related to the Ozarks. These could be on a variety of topics including historical (mills, the first Ozarks settlers, local Native American tribes, the impact of the Civil War on the Ozarks, Baldknobbers, the history of a particular community, log-rollers, etc.), cultural (dialect, place names, folk remedies, local folk tales, ghost stories, etc.), personal interest (the history of a family member born and raised in the Ozarks), or even scientific (varieties of Ozark vegetation, caves or sinkholes, knobs, river wildlife, etc.). With every project interviews and original photographs or video will be a major factor. These elements will culminate in a “digital story,” a presentation combining audio and video, that outlines your findings. This digital story will be produced on a computer using Adobe Premiere. The students will present their digital stories at a special after-school film festival, where they will narrate their experiences with the project and show their digital story. The community will be invited to attend this presentation.