tms@themodernstory.com

TMS Fellow Updates
14
Aug

2

Classroom News, TMS Fellow Updates

Caterpillars and Characters

“Wow! That’s a very green caterpillar! Don’t come near me!” I watch as Tulasi, normally quite reserved, stretches her face into a grimace and shouts these words at the camera. Earlier, I had shown the girls a short clip of an actress “reading with expression.” The actress changes her voice to represent various characters in a story, and the girls were impressed. We watched the clip several times (upon request) and then launched into a “reading with expression” session. I shocked the girls a bit by going first and choosing to sing about the green caterpillar. My fake opera seemed to encourage them to be a little more daring, and they giggled as they used exaggerated enunciation and varied their tones for the different words.

A few days before, Kelly, Asma and I had listened to the girls’ first few rounds of voiceovers for their “Spring Morning” photo story. The girls knew the lines, but rattled them off in a monotone, unintelligible breath before ending with “thank you.”  We knew we needed to help them discover how to convey emotion with their voices. In the process of practicing, I learned that we have several potential actresses in our class. Sudeepika wrote down her caterpillar line and promised to rehearse reading in different voices as extra homework. While some girls would blurt out the lines in the first silly voice that came to mind, Sushma thought about which parts she wanted to emphasize before speaking. All the girls improved their voiceover “style.” And we certainly had fun changing our voices!

One of the best parts about the last few weeks has been solidifying our relationships with each of our students. We’ve come to know more about their individual personalities, family backgrounds, strengths and weaknesses. At Bansilalpet, Bhavani dreams of being a fashion designer and is one of our master photographers. At Audiah Memorial, Rohit is our go-to for brilliant ideas. Divya keeps Bhushan in check while Yakamma is always cheerful. The students have become more comfortable in class, and we have come to genuinely enjoy and appreciate their individuality. This new familiarity also brings forth new challenges. As Kelly pointed out, the “novelty” of TMS has worn off. The students are more restless, completing tasks more quickly and ready for more. While I prefer to have our students less in awe of us as teachers and less timid around the camera, we must find ways to expand our lessons to keep pace with their growth.

Our first short video unit lessons have also uncovered some hidden strengths in some of our students. Mamatha has a knack for thinking of follow-up questions on the spot, and Divya Sree can quickly direct and frame an interview shot. I greatly enjoyed watching the girls work together as a team during these first practice interviews!

I also want to give a shout out to our volunteer Praneet, who has been an invaluable help with translations and with encouraging the students at Audiah. He is embarking on the next phase of his education and we will miss him in the classroom!! Meanwhile…we will continue to mine the gems hidden in the imaginations of our students as we progress through our first video stories.

30
Jul

2

Photo Stories, Reflections, TMS Fellow Updates

Photoaugliaphobia (n): the fear of glaring lights

In the United States we say “cheese.” In Italy, they say formaggio. The Spanish chorus patata (potato), the Bulgarians chime zele (cabbage), and the Chinese beam with茄子 (eggplant), while most Latin American countries diga “Whiskeyyyyy!” The French grin at the sound of ouistiti (which ironically isn’t cheese at all, but the marmoset monkey). Among the students of Hyderabad, there doesn’t seem to a Hindi or Telegu word to prompt a smile before the camera. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be much precedent for smiling in front of the camera at all.

This occurred to me my very first day at Railway Girls’ High School. After unfurling a bag of coloring materials, the students of 8B set to work writing their name on a half sheet of colored card stock and decorating it. Some drew Mehndi designs while others dotted their nametag with stars, chattering all the while, bartering for more markers, and scrunching their faces in intense concentration. There are few joys as universal as coloring (in my high school, the most popular organization was the coloring book club) and their delight over broken crayons and doodles raised my hopes for the next six months. If coloring could transcend linguistic and cultural difference, maybe cameras could to.

One by one, I asked each girl to hold up her nametag. And one by one, the bubble of excitement would burst the moment I raised the camera and trained the lens on their face. Their smiles would fall. Their mouths would clamp shut and their jaws would stiffen, as if bracing themselves for something painful. When taking their pictures, I was struck by the distinct feeling I was intruding on their privacy. That I was a member of some foreign paparazzi, freezing them atop a pedestal and forcing them into the limelight. These pictures would be put on the TMS website after all, into blog posts and videos, and liable to be seen by anyone. “Just one more moment teacher, I’m not ready,” they would say. The camera seemed to rob them of something they weren’t ready to give. “Don’t be afraid, it’s not going to hurt you,” I found myself consoling. “It’s just a camera.”

But wasn’t just a camera, not to them.

Though no more than a few scraps of metal, plastic, and glass, the camera is also an instrument of self-surveillance, enabling us to freeze frame our lives in excess. It often begins in utero. A report from the security company AVG revealed that 34 percent of American parents upload their prenatal sonogram to the Internet. And once this child is born, it’s only a matter of time until he or she is the subject of some blissful relation’s camera and his or her lifetime of digital documentation has begun.

Your life has most likely been documented ad infinitum. Think about how many pictures you’ve posed for. Think about how many pictures you haven’t posed for: candid shots, sleeping shots, atmospheric shots. Hundreds. Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands of pictures. We take pictures of our vacations, our pets, of that time we ran a marathon, and that time we did absolutely nothing and took a picture of it anyway. The camera chastens us to leave no party unattended, no ice cream sundae eaten, and no muscle unmoved without visual proof. Bonus points if said ice cream is rendered in Instagram. And although our snap-happy love affair with the digital camera allows us to share our lives, it also encourages our vanity and cavalier attitude towards the camera. Who cares if I botch this picture when another opportunity is just around the corner?

As I clicked through the pictures of 8B, passing sullen portrait after sullen portrait, I wondered if these students had the same luxury. I wondered how many had ever had their picture taken before. All of them come from working class families, father who drive buses and autos, mothers who are housewives, as one of many children in houses where a camera was an unlikely possession (costing upwards of Rs. 5000). Was it possible that this was their very first? That this hasty, two-second snapshot of Sim Rani, of Ruhi, of Rubeena in front of a peeling blue door was one of the few that had ever been taken?

In the weeks to come, the girls began to bring in pictures of themselves as children. All of them were taken inside professional studios and staged by the invisible hand of the photographer. Baby Divya is adorned with flower gardens, gold bangles stacked around her tiny wrists, and gazing with bright eyes into the camera (or at some toy bird shaken for her attention). T. Sushma’s brother is donning a plaid vest and matching trousers, his arms hanging slackly from hands in stuffed pockets, arranged by an adult with blithe indifference for the oddity of this pose on a two-year-old.

You can make out the features of Nelofor inside the round face of her young self, as her mother, dressed in a beautiful red and gold sari, cups her protectively by the shoulders. Her father stands next to her mother in grey suit with a Winsor knot. His expression bears an uncanny resemblance to the frowns of my students. Solemn. Sullen. But filled with an emotion buried seven layers deep. It was the expression of a man who could not waste taking a picture of his family. Who couldn’t afford to pose with abandon because he wasn’t sure when another opportunity would come.

And in this way, the camera isn’t just a camera. It’s a looking glass—a medium that allows us to see ourselves as other see us with undoctored honesty. Growing up without a camera only intensifies its power, rendering you especially vulnerable if caught unawares. It’s little wonder why the students of 8B were poker-faced their first day in TMS class. To be on the receiving end of such an unflinching gaze, without a lifetime of instruction on how to pose and project some ready-made emotion, smiling must have been the last thing on their minds.

To encourage their confidence in front of the camera, we made a “practice” photo story to complement our “Girls Around the World” unit. Each team was asked to “tell a story about a girl” in relation to one of four assigned themes: friendship, a party, nature, and religion. Not only did this cement their technical understanding of the camera, but it also invited them to explore a range of emotion within the confines of a fictional character. Tapping into their inner Tollywood actresses (the Hollywood of the Telegu language), they could emote in a way befitting the heroine, father figure, friend, and villain of their story without the pressure to “be themselves.” Because let’s face it – being “yourself” in front of the camera is a performance of its own kind.

And so instead of soliciting a smile, Neha and I have been asking the students of 8B to simply let their guard down. We’ve told them its okay to look goofy, to be spontaneous, and to allow their personality to take precedence over their appearance, pulling whatever facial stunts feel right at the time and not worrying whether it flatters them.

Story of A Girl from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

In exchanging “cheese” for emotional honesty, the photographs for 8B’s “Story of Girl” ran the gamut of facial expressions: smirks, scowls, and twinkles, protruding tongues, blurred limbs, and raised eyebrows, gazes of burning intensity, of incredulity, of amusement, glares and glances that radiate their absorption in the present moment. 8B has a word for this now, borrowed from the life of the Hawaiian “soul surfer” Bethany Hamilton.

In 8B, we are striving to become “soul photographers.”

19
Jul

2

Reflections, TMS Fellow Updates

From Toy to Tool

Last week we wrapped up the annual TMS photo scavenger hunt with all of our schools. The scavenger hunt is one of the first exercises that really allows the students to get creative with the camera, and we came to class excited to see what the day would hold. Railway’s 8A was as energetic as ever, but within the first few moments of the hunt we realized something was missing. We had spent several classes working on writing and visualizing letters to the world—notes that express the girls’ thoughts on local and global issues.  Some girls wrote about the importance of education, others wrote of tolerance and still others described the value of passion and friendship. We spent a day making collages of the letters.  The thoughtfulness and sincerity that came from the girls during these exercises made us very hopeful for our future projects.  So now that the girls stood with cameras at the ready, where was that sense of purposeful thinking? Most of the girls were creative enough in terms of turning every item on the scavenger hunt list into a way to take snapshots of friends. We really had to encourage them to think like photographers; to take a moment to plan the best way to shoot a topic; to deliberate as a team; to pay less attention to whose turn it was with the camera and focus more on why we are using the camera in the first place. As expected, the scavenger hunt was incredibly fun for everyone involved, with tree climbing, dancing and even teachers running across the yard. More importantly, it was our first chance to move from viewing the camera as a toy to thinking of it as a tool for expression.

At our other schools, scavenger hunt day gave us a chance to see our AIF students in action—and we were amazed! Since we only see these students twice a week, we are still becoming familiar with the class dynamics and the students’ ways of problem solving. Language barriers tend to make self-expression in these classes a bit more difficult. The fact that the camera uses a language of its own broke down inhibitions and drew the students out of their shells. We learned that the camera can really be used to instill a quick and effective dose of confidence. I can’t wait to get the cameras back into the hands of these students!

9
Jul

1

Reflections, Student Writing, TMS Fellow Updates

Shooting Outward, Focusing Inward

This past week at Railway School was spent familiarizing the students with the digital camera, while simultaneously beckoning them to begin to unravel their own individuality and passion. In preparation for the photo story project, we have been working through the power of photographs in telling stories – both of socially relevant and emotion content. This balance was reflected in our lesson plans this week that began with a Letter to the World assignment and ended with an exercise in the movement from head-to-heart with poetry. I was impressed with the topics the girls brought up in their letters, and would like to let their voices speak for themselves this week with excerpts from their classwork.

The Letter to the World responses can be categorized into 4 major categories: Education, Environment, Unity in Diversity, and Equality/Human Rights. I will go through these one at a time.

Environmental Awareness:

I am surprised with the number of students expressing an interest in the problem of water pollution. Perhaps it should not be surprising, considering the quality of the lake water we drive past every day on the way to work, and the caution we exercise ourselves in what water to drink when while living here. Here are a few words from the students.

Soniya:

Long ago humans worship earth as a goddess but nowadays humans have big axes to cut trees and cars and buses to pollute air with smoke and fumes. Insecticides and pesticides are also polluting the water, and some people are wasting water – it is not a good thing to waste water. They don’t know that still some people don’t have water to drink and we are wasting food and water. Some poor people don’t have food to eat so we have to take care of the Earth, for people. For example, we use bicycles or walk for short distances, we have to reduce plastic and recycle. Forests are being destroyed. Forests and mountains help to make rain and keep life on Earth going, we need them for enough rain.

I am very sad about what is being done to Earth. That is why I am writing to the world a letter, so we will all grow up and become good citizens. I want to have to take care of the Earth, plant more trees in our house, school, and in towns and villages. Every human has the right to take care of Earth, plants, trees, and animals.

Think now, after all you have just one mother earth. I trust we will take care of the earth well.

Your lovingly,
Soniya

Sushma:

Dear World,
I want to tell a few words to change the world. We should reduce the dust because with the dust we face so many diseases. This is our world, we should keep our surroundings clean and neat. In the world different religions are there, like Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. Different religions are there but we are living on the same places, Earth and Sky is the same. I want to tell one request to the world. The world should be clean and green.
Yours Lovingly,
Sushma
8th Class

Sandhya:
“I want to save the world from pollution. Please don’t do pollution in the world.”

Tulasi:
“Our water is polluted by factories, by insecticides and pesticides, we have to save water. If water is not there on the Earth, we are all not alive.”

Education for All:

Dear World,

I am Prathyusha. My message to the world is “give study to everyone.” We see on the road that there are so many beggars. If we want to stop seeing beggars it means that we have to give study to all. When they are studying then they can get a position as a worker. When I come to a high position, I will build a hostel for all.

Thanking you,
Yours faithfully,
Prathyusha

I am not convinced this is the original thought of a student, but I was also impressed with the following that appeared in the journal of Sweta Padmini:

E = Enlightenment
D = Duty
U = Unity
C = Character
A = Action
T = Testing
I = Ideas
O = Oneliness
N = Nation

Equality/Human Rights:

One of the girls was having trouble deciding what topic she should write her letter about. I asked her if there is anything in her community that makes her angry, and she responded that she gets angry when people make fun of beggars. She went on to write a heartwarming letter about the need to express love towards the people who beg on the streets.

Yuva Rani:

Dear world,
A country with large population and innumerable religious places has many beggars. In India all types of beggars are found in large numbers. These beggars are small children, women, handicapped, and diseased people. Sometimes children of young ages are stolen or kidnapped by members of gangs and get them trained for begging. The money the children or people begging get will go to those people. Most of the beggars are found near temples, mosques, and churches, railway stations, bus stops, hospitals, etc. In has not received people’s support. I is true that most people do not like this public nuisance but are somewhere eager to help the poor beggars. So, I am telling that we have to show love and affection with the beggars.

Yours lovingly,
Yuva Rani

Unity: Religious and Human

‘Unity in Diversity’ is one of the aspects of Indian culture that it seems many take pride in – for good reason. This sentiment resonated through the writing of some students.

Srav’s

Dear World,
I am Srav’s of 8th class from Railway Girls High School. I am telling about religions like Hindus, Christians, Muslims. In Hindu there are so many festivals. Holi is the important festival where we play with color – all of my friends come to my house and we play with color. On December 25th, Christians celebrate Christmas. If we have problems we pray to Jesus and they will be solved. The Muslims wear long white tops and caps also. In our country we don’t fight – we are friendly and we are all equal.

Kirthi:

To the world,
I am D. Kirthi studying in 8th A. I am telling about unity in diversity. All countries have to be in unity. If we fight we get sad, if we all are in unity we get happy.

Keep smile and be unity.

I look forward to helping the girls express their opinions on all of these issues, and am excited to see the first signs of coming up with a meaningful project during our time together this six months. Finally, I will close with a few of the student’s poems…

Prathyusha:
Peaceful Heart
Running Person
Angel
Thoughtful Mind
Hugging Girl
Yumuna
Unlike to go to another school
Something Different
House is my Heaven
A Different Mind Thing

Sushma
Sincerity
Unity
Strength
Honesty
Marvelous
Attraction

Krevathi on her Mother
Mother
Peaceful, Shanti
Cooking, Washing, Cleaning
Amma, Mummy
Godess

Thank you.

Until next time,
Kelly

14
Jun

0

TMS Fellow Updates

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Introducing: Dana

Hello TMS! This is Dana, one of three new fellows eager for the 2012 semester. I’m writing this first (of many!) posts in my backyard in Colorado. It’s spring here, with roses blooming in full force and robins singing with gusto.  As I sit enjoying the unusually warm breeze, I am also savoring an undercurrent of excitement. There is nothing better than a new beginning, and in just a few days I will be embarking on a truly fantastic journey.  I’m looking forward to getting to know Hyderabad and to practicing Hindi, but mostly I cannot wait to become a part of The Modern Story.

I graduated this May with a B.S in Journalism and a Certificate in International Media. I studied diligently in many classes that taught the ins-and-outs of global journalism. In one of my reporting courses, we read a book called Telling True Stories. I still have my copy, because this poignant book revealed that storytelling– journalistic or otherwise–makes the world go ’round.

Pulitzer Prize winner Jacqui Banaszynski wrote the first chapter, titled “Stories Matter.” She says, “stories make us human…stories are our soul.” Like Banaszynski, I believe that stories provide voices and perspectives essential for tying humanity together. Luckily, today’s age of digital technology allows us to easily share our stories with the rest of the world. This process of sharing can be empowering, educational and moving.

In many ways, The Modern Story carries the same message as Telling True Stories, which is why I am thrilled to have a part in fulfilling the mission of TMS.  So while enjoying these last few days in Colorado, I’ll be dreaming of the stories we’ll be telling in the coming months!

TMS Meets Dana from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

13
Jun

2

Pre-Departure, The Modern Story Fellowship, TMS Fellow Updates

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Kelly Adams, 2012 Fellow Introduction

Namaste,

My name is Kelly Adams and I am one of the 2012 teaching fellows with the Modern Story.  I rest tonight at the home where I grew up in Lebanon, Pennsylvania- in a state of, at once, reflection and anxious anticipation for the journey of challenges and triumphs that await upon my arrival in Hyderabad in the coming days. I would like to take this time to introduce myself.

I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to work on behalf of the Modern Story, and towards the mission of integrating technology and narrative in the classroom and encouraging students to engage with their personal, social, and natural environment in a proactive way. I hope to facilitate experiential learning through the Modern Story curriculum and production of film projects that will extend from language development, technological confidence, and career planning to personal empowerment, cross-cultural education, and creative discipline. I am also excited to develop along my own course of digital storytelling in this unique opportunity to bring awareness to the lives of urban, Indian youth on a global scale, through the voices, images, and productions of those concerned.

I come from a background in Anthropology and Environmental Earth Science, and align my academic focus to the junction of these two disciplines, where the nature of human experience meets the human experience of nature. My senior thesis in Anthropology concerned Native American sacred lands, and the reality of religious freedom and self-determination for the Native American population of the United States. Writing this paper was as much a process of self-discovery as it was an academic project, and I was left with a new respect for the true beauty in diversity of ways of being, seeing, relating, understanding, and defining human life that co-inhabit the cultural sphere, and with a determination to serve the sustenance of cultural and ecological diversity on planet Earth.

I am a firm believer in the power of the film medium as a tool to enhance recognition, promote self-determination, and serve the empowerment of disconnected and disenfranchised people, communities, and cultures of the globe. This will not be my first experience in India – in fact, I have only recently returned to American soil after an 11-month trip abroad that began June, 2011.  I spent 7 months living and working in Pune, Maharasthra on behalf of a new media online documentary film festival, whose mission is to raise awareness and evolve human consciousness towards a more integrated and holistic paradigm. Upon completing my obligations with this festival, I took an extended layover in Cappadocia, Turkey where I had my first practice run at the creative construction of my own documentary project, which I entitled ‘Landscape Biography: Cappadocia” – something that I would like to pursue further in my future studies.

I am so excited to return to India, and feel that I would need to be a poet to communicate the emotion that this country awoke in me. Although I was initially disoriented in this country, by the overwhelming colors, sounds, smells, and tastes, there is a spirit that infests its air that has profoundly touched me.  In the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘India is a bundle of contradictions, held together by strong but invisible threads,’ and it is a powerful place to confront the true unity in diversity of life on this planet. I have grown so much from my experience in India, and am excited for the chance to give back-  hands on, on the ground, and immersed in this culture daily.  If there is one thing I have learned in India, it is the extent of education that occurs outside of the classroom  – with this in my heart, I am grateful for the opportunity to enter the classroom and have a holistic, reciprocal, learning experience between fellows and students.

 

I am also excited to share this experience with all of you in the Modern Story community! We will be sure to keep you updated on the activities and projects of the students!

 

Until next time,

Kelly Adams

Feb, 4

0

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, 29

0

Daily Updates, TMS Fellow Updates

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Aliens, Fear, and a Goodbye Poem

Thursday afternoon I arrived at the Railway school feeling tired. Ilana and I had trekked to Nalgonda for the last time Wednesday before and Thursday morning held an unexpected session at Sultan Bazaar, after finding out at 9:30 am that Friday’s scheduled class would not be possible.

When we began the class, Ilana and Asma each had a group of 7 girls editing videos (two computers for thirty girls makes a “stations” approach necessary), while Neha and I took the rest of the students outside for more time using the video camera. At first they were going to interview some of the tenth class students. In recent weeks our girls have conducted several teacher interviews for their final project about choices and decision-making, as well as two fantastic interviews with Google staff members during our recent field trip. (Have you watched Monika’s interview on Vimeo yet??) But after the first interview Thursday I could tell that the eighth class girls needed a change of pace.

So Neha and I divided our students into groups of five and instructed them to create one-minute silent skits of the following scenario: they are in a village and an alien lands there. (Thank you to Mira Dabit, a Palestinian storyteller who shared this idea in my children’s art class in Nablus.)

Amidst giggles and a few “Really, no words??” responses, the girls set to work planning their dramas with little need for guidance. When they were ready, each group performed their skits for the others, with one or two girls filming. All three groups portrayed a scary creature arriving to break up a group of girls working or playing. The actresses reacted to the alien with fear and violence. Here’s an example:

Alien Landing! from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

After watching all of the performances, we applauded all the groups, and I asked the students to separate into their acting groups again.

“Okay!” I declared, “I want you to make a skit that starts the same way: you’re playing in a village, and an alien lands there. But this time, I want you to pretend that the alien is friendly. Show us what happens.”

Looking a bit more pensive but nevertheless full of ideas the girls got back to planning and rehearsing. Again the groups performed with students filming. Here’s the second skit from the same group as above:

The Friendly Alien from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Coming together for a wrap-up, I asked the girls what emotions we saw in the two sets of scenes. For the first set, they identified happiness in the village, fear when the alien arrived, and anger directed toward the alien. In the latter scenes, the girls identified happiness, friendliness, sympathy, and sadness (when the alien left).

“That’s great,” I told them. “You demonstrated a wide range of feelings in your scenes. So now tell me something…Why are you afraid of aliens?!” The girls burst out laughing and shouted things about aliens being gross or mean or harmful. I asked if they knew any aliens. “In movies!” they replied.

“Sometimes things we don’t know are scary,” I said. “You didn’t know me six months ago…Were you afraid of our class?” Some of the girls ardently shook their heads, while others raised their hands with wide eyes, clearly recognizing the difference between how they felt in August and how they feel about TMS class now. I said something teacher-ish about how much we’d learned and shared with each other, and how even though some things we don’t know are scary, they can be really exciting, too. The girls were silent for a rare moment, looking at me with smiles.

After that we watched the videos they’d just shot and joined the rest of the students in the science lab, where some other girls recited a poem they’d written for me, Ilana, Asma, and Neha:

Railway Girls Goodbye Poem from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

As I listened to our students’ effusive goodbye, I reflected on my own feelings about our class, and how the lessons I really loved teaching were the ones where digital media skills were not the end goal, but the means through which we encouraged the girls to explore their world, to expand their imaginations, and importantly, to express themselves freely. The success we’ve had in those pursuits showed clearly to me during the alien skit exercise. When I left Railway Thursday afternoon I was no longer tired; I was inspired.

Jan, 28

0

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, 19

0

Reflections, TMS Fellow Updates

Everybody wants to learn

The time Ilana and I have as TMS teaching fellows is coming to a close. Today I spent an hour in a Xerox shop printing TMS certificates of completion for our students. After reading the English text for a while, the adult man operating the shop computer highlighted the section that says “exceptionally trained in photography, filmmaking, video editing and computer multimedia software.” He told me, “This boy [pointing to the one behind the Xerox machine] knows all this.” I looked at the boy, assuming (naively) that he was about 18, since he was working a regular job. I’ve met other boys who did “digital printing” coursework in upper secondary school (11th and 12th grade), and I’d talked to this boy, Ramesh, a few times before when he was the only one in the shop. Like many youth I’ve met in such shops, he’s more adept with the technology than his elder superiors, who take charge of interactions with me when they’re around or not watching cricket on the shop television.

This time I asked Ramesh his age. 14. “Are you studying?” No. The man told me that Ramesh had failed his 10th standard exams. But you know all of these things” I said, indicating the computers and other equipment (Xerox shops do passport photos and other multimedia services). Now the man altered what he’d said earlier: Ramesh wants to learn photography, filmmaking, video editing and computer multimedia software. The man was asking me to teach the boy.

Throughout our experiences in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh and greater India, Ilana and I have been asked over and over again to share our digital media skills with the people–or the children of the people–that we meet. Today was yet another reminder of the uniqueness of the classes we teach as TMS fellows and the magnitude of students ready and eager to learn.