building a community of practice around digital storytelling

building a community of practicearound

digital storytelling

Eric BehrensAssociate CITO, Swarthmore College

behrens@swarthmore.edu

what is digital storytelling?

Digital storytelling uses personal digital technology to combine a number of media into a coherent narrative.—Jason Ohler, Digital Storytelling in the Curriculum

http://www.storycenter.org

Many individuals and communities have used the term "digital storytelling" to describe a wide variety of new media production practices. What best describes our approach is its emphasis on personal voice and facilitative teaching methods. Many of the stories made in our workshops are directly connected to the images collected in life's journey. But our primary concern is encouraging thoughtful and emotionally direct writing.—Joe Lambert, Center for Digital Storytelling

combined media

personal voice

facilitative teaching

direct writing

1440

3-day workshops

participants

year

the t-word

training

1. get them to sign up2. get them to show up3. get them to use what they learned

hard

harder

wow, that’s hard

Frustrations for technology trainers

If we are really so concerned with

his nourishment, maybe we’d

better think about how we teach the

man to fish.

COMMUNITIESof

PRACTICE

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.—Etienne Wenger

Beginners pick up on a group’s practices through interaction with peers and more experienced members.

Meaning is made through sharing of collective experience.

Allowance for varying levels of legitimate participation; with increased participation, one learns more.

Attributes of CoP’s

CLAC is a thriving community of practice

developing our community of practice

workshops are just the starting point

academic technologies staff are participants

share our work

support ongoing work and new explorations

case: learning 4 life

“Because the sessions utilized so many ITS resources, participants seemed to become more comfortable in these spaces and going to ITS employees for resources.  Learning the names of everyone in Beardsley made the space seem less foreign and more open to all members of the community.”

—Gina Grubb ’10, Learning 4 Life

advice for other digital storytelling CoP’s

recruit, retain, keep a waiting list

faculty like workshopping with staff, and vice versasome people don’t see themselves as storytellerscareful scheduling essential to participation

be an educator-participant, not a trainer

find brokers

thank you for listening to our story.