Publishing Video to Celebrate Kansas Voices

If CKV workshop participants do not want to create or use their own YouTube account to upload their videos, we’re providing an option for them to upload to our Storychasers YouTube channel and then embed their videos to our learning community.

In addition to creating this new how-to guide and integrating it in the CKV participant handout, we’ve also made numerous changes and additions to our Storychasers wiki. For Image Resources, Music and Audio Resources, and Copyright and Fair Use Resources, that meant “mirroring” pages on our Storychasers wiki which we’ve previously built (and still have available) on our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices (COV) project wiki. We’re hopeful with grant support to scale this statewide oral history and digital storytelling model to other states in addition to Kansas and Oklahoma in the years ahead. Rather than create separate project wikis for each state, as we did initially for Oklahoma, it seems more logical to create a main/central wiki for all Storychaser projects. A listing of all the websites we maintain and have created in the past for Storychasers is now available on the “Community Portal” page of our Storychasers wiki.

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Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

We’ve only begun to share our stories with the world. Make way for the Storychasers!

Several videos from last week’s COV workshop are now featured on our learning community website. This summer Storychasers is presenting one or two COV workshops around the state of Oklahoma EACH week. Our lead facilitators will feature different videos after each workshop, so keep checking back for new content throughout the summer.

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Others argue that there has been a ratcheting up of meanness—that the changes in technology have made us nastier and more cynical. “It’s like a blood sport,” says Mr. Fink, who runs a crisis-management firm in Los Angeles. “It feels like everyone has their cellphone out, ready to take a photo that will hurt someone else.”

It’s as if all of us now have our own printing presses and our own television studios, and we can use them for good or for evil. The problem is that too many of us succumb to the anonymity of the Web, says Parry Aftab, a cyber-security attorney based in Irvington, N.Y. “We’re braver when we type. We don’t have to look someone in their eyes. It’s easier to be vicious, to cross the line between funny and cruel.”

photo credit: trix0r

Are you encouraging the students with whom you work to use their cell phones, laptops, and other interactive technologies for good instead of evil? We need to empower digital witnesses to constructively share their voices and those of others on the global stage. As Jeffrey notes, television and YouTube are full of “bad examples” when it comes to to digital media use.

Helping students become aware of their digital footprint and the impact that can have on their lives as well as others’ lives is just the first step. Jeffrey writes:

At Indiana University, my daughter is taking a course titled “The Principles of Public Relations.” On the first day of class, the instructor, Lanier Holt, surprised his 104 students by telling them he had conducted a “scouting report” by Googling each of their names and checking out any photos of them he could access on Facebook.

Many of the students still seemed to have an untarnished Web presence. But more than a few were the subject of embarrassing postings—their own and other people’s. Mr. Holt found photos of his students with marijuana pipes or posing half-naked. He came upon photos in which students had shaved off an eyebrow of someone who had passed out from drinking.

Mr. Holt warns his students that future employers are Googling them, and that unseemly images of them “tagged” on some other person’s Facebook page could come back to haunt them. The most proactive step they can take is to assume everything they do may end up as part of the public record.

The solution is NOT to simply stay off the web. I don’t think the solution should end with simply maintaining your own digital footprint, either. Deep web search tools like Pipl (referenced by Joyce Valenza in her K12Online09 keynote, “The Wizard of Apps“) can help us better monitor our footprint, but not constructively shape it. “The solution,” if there is one, lies in defining ourselves as positive and constructive contributors to the social media conversations taking place all around us.

Words and images are powerful, and they can shape our perceptions along with the perceptions of others in lasting ways. Many of us today DO have “our own printing presses and our own television studios” in our pockets. We need more storychasers modeling the ethical and constructive uses of digital media in our schools and communities. All our schools need the student journalism class publishing content on an interactive, moderated website which can serve as a sand box for respectful social networking in the community. Where are the leaders in your community, sounding this clarion call for digital citizenship? “The T-Bird Times: The Northfield Middle School Newspaper / Multimedia Club” is one of the best examples I’ve seen to date of this idea in action. I heard Kevin Jarrett share about it at NECC last year in Washington DC.

Last summer I had an opportunity to share some thoughts at the Oklahoma RTNDF Multimedia Workshop. As the day kicked off, Carol (who was leading us, I didn’t record her last name at the time) shared a summary of the three most important rules for journalists to follow. Whether or not we are formally enrolled in journalism classes, teaching journalism, or employed as journalists, I think we can benefit from keeping these in mind as we use social media. Carol suggested we all remember to:

1. Be accurate
2. Be fair
3. Be clear

What kind of resources and support would you want if you were to start (or encourage others to start) a student Storychasers “club” at your school? This could be a club activity where students learned to use flash-based camcorders, digital cameras, audio recorders, and blogs to constructively document and share their views and perspectives on school and the community. Students could accept “assignments” and work to create multimedia online reports about them, at times working collaboratively with students in other locations. I’d like to build that kind of interactive community through Storychasers, borrowing some of the ideas from CNN’s iReporter community.

There’s little doubt it’s a challenge to not simply survive but thrive in this “age of humiliation.” We need proactive, rather than simply reactionary responses, to help all the learners in our communities become constructive storychasers.

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Sometimes people will transparently share their inappropriate intentions for wanting to join your learning community when they fill out their profile, as an individual did in the example above. More often, however, people who are NOT really interested in the “educational networking” purpose of your network will simply skip questions, and may choose all possible role options in the profile questions. These are “red flags” for people to keep OUT of your network.

photo credit: tiffa130

Sometimes membership applications fall into a “grey zone” when you are not exactly sure if the person is legitimately interested in participating constructively in the community. In these cases, we generally approve the request for membership and then monitor the person’s contributions. Alternatively or in addition, since we ask for an email address we can also email the person and ask follow up questions. That is generally more time than an administrator wants to commit to moderating membership, however, so monitoring the community and intervening if something inappropriate is said or posted is our general procedure.

To setup new member moderation, administrators in the Ning can click MANAGE – PRIVACY and then select a checkbox to moderate membership applications.

Once membership is moderated, a message in the right sidebar of your site will appear (for administrators only) whenever new membership applications have been received.

Moderating a learning community like this might sound like a scary prospect fraught with danger, but it has been a very positive and rewarding experience for us. Key to that outcome is the fact that we have membership applications moderated, and several questions (including some open ended questions) required before anyone can submit the form to join the community.

It’s critical to “guard the gates” of our learning communities to keep spammers and others with malicious intent out.

photo credit: bortescristian

If someone DOES get “inside” who has malicious intentions, there are several administrative options which can be taken. If someone has posted something clearly “beyond the pale” or through their behavior demonstrates they are NOT in the right place as a member of your community, administrators can kick them out entirely. This deletes all past posts and comments they’ve made, deletes their profile, and prevents them from joining the community again with the same email address. In the past, Ning called this process for administrators “banning” users. Now the language is “Suspend for Spam” or “Suspend from Network.” These options can be made (by your designated administrators only) by viewing an individual’s profile page:

These “suspension” options also can be chosen by choosing MANAGE – MEMBERS:

Keep in mind Ning profiles / logins can be used on multiple sites, so if you “Suspend for Spam” I suspect Ning overlords receive notification that the account should be watched as a potential spammer account which should be suspended more globally.

If a member of the learning community has made a mistake or said something inappropriate, but does not appear to be a spammer or someone who has committed a “learning network felony” justifying suspension / banning, one of our administrators generally messages the person and asks them to change or remove the offending content. Sometimes we’ll (as administrators) directly remove it, but in these cases it’s often best to let the person make the change themselves. These situations personify the idea that we need “digital sand boxes” for learners to practice digital citizenship and responsible social networking. Our learning community is moderated and accountable, which are two key ingredients for a safe as well as constructive learning network.

photo credit: Grant Barrett

Like many others, I’m very interested in the policy changes which Ning is expected to announce May 5th for free and educational networks. We’ve been paying to remove advertisements and use a custom domain on our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices Ning for several years, and I expect we’ll continue to do so. Hopefully Ning administrators will continue to make educational networking on their site financially reasonable for teachers, librarians and schools. There are a LOT of important lessons we all need to learn and practice as digital citizens, and Ning networks administrated as learning communities can be great places for that learning to take place.

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“Integration at Wagoner” by Sonya Farr tells the story of Coach Bill Benham, Sonya’s father, who led the first integrated basketball team at Wagoner. Wagoner is located about fifty miles west/southwest of Lowrey School, just north of Muskogee. It is wonderful Sonya was able to actually interview her father for this digital story, since this “history” comes alive so much more hearing it directly from him. It reminds me of a digital story a coach in Miami, Texas, created at a workshop I facilitated there around 2005. He told about what it was like to be a player on one of the first integrated basketball teams in West Texas. Stories like this which relate what it was like during the early days of desegregation are often powerful. These stories can be good catalysts for discussions about equal treatment, racism, discrimination, and human rights.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Kevin Crossno, a social studies teacher at The Casady School in Oklahoma City who attended COV at Lowrey, created a digital story titled, “The Founding of BSA.” As a Boy Scout myself, I really enjoyed hearing Kevin relate this history and particularly the fact that the first Boy Scout Troop in the United States was chartered in Pawhuska, Oklahoma! Boy Scouting in the USA is celebrating its 100 year anniversary this year!

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

I love food and food festivals, and Rachael Ranallo piqued my interest to visit the annual Italian Festival in McAlester, Oklahoma at the end of May this year with her digital story. The music she used added so much to the story!

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Last of all, Jennifer Swafford shared the digital story, “Planting the Pines at Lowrey.” This is a great example of how teachers as well as students can help preserve their local, community history. Without storytellers like Jennifer, stories like this might not be shared online and preserved for generations to come. I loved seeing the current photos of these huge trees, and hearing the story about when they were planted years ago by Jennifer’s great uncle, Harold Terry. Jennifer’s dad, Benny Cassidy, tells the story, with help from his digital storytelling daughter.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

If you are interested in participating in a Celebrate Oklahoma Voices workshop this year, we have seven more workshops this summer which still have open slots available. A total of 16 COV workshops are scheduled at this point through August in different parts of the state. Our workshop model includes ten to twenty-five participants, and if a workshop is not full educators from other schools can register to attend. We will also be offering a Celebrate Kansas Voices (CKV) workshop in Manhattan August 4-6, and more information about that opportunity (including cost and registration details) will be forthcoming next week.

Anyone is welcome to join both the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices learning community (with 787 members currently, and 574 videos) as well as the Celebrate Kansas Voices learning community which is just getting started. Learn more about Storychasers, the non-profit which presents COV and CKV, by visiting and subscribing to the Storychasers blog and following Storychasers on Twitter. Complete details about the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices digital storytelling model are available on the COV project wiki.

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I’m spending several days this week in and near Tahlequah, Oklahoma, leading a Celebrate Oklahoma Voices digital storytelling workshop for Storychasers at Lowrey School. Lowrey is one of just five public school districts in Oklahoma implementing a 1:1 laptop initiative, and is located about thirty minutes north of Tahlequah. This evening after I tweeted about driving to Tahlequah, Kelly Croy tweeted:

Tahlequah is where Billy Coleman picked up his dogs at the train depot in Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. Take pics pls.

I certainly will take photos in and around Tahlequah this week, but Kelly’s tweet reminded me of Amy Brookshire’s COV video about Wilson Rawls. It’s just over two minutes long, and gives an excellent (as well as personal) biographical snapshot of Rawls.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Students of Stilwell, Oklahoma teacher Andrea created another digital story about Wilson Rawls. (2 min, 10 sec) Rawls’ story of becoming a writer through persistence, despite his lack of formal education, is inspiring and may come as a surprise to many readers.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

It’s nice to compare these two videos as examples of teacher-created and student-created digital stories. If your students have read or will read “Where the Red Fern Grows,” consider using one or both of these videos as part of your author study about Wilson Rawls.

It’s been a few months since I led a COV workshop, and I’m looking forward to working with teachers at Lowrey this week who will create and share their own digital stories! We now have 567 videos in our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices learning community, created by Oklahoma teachers and students.

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A Global Initiative and Competition for the next generation of leaders and social entrepreneurs – Seeking global thinkers 14 to 24… For 2010, we are looking for 3-minute videos with Issue & Solution format. Express your issue and propose an innovative solution-project. Winners presented to Obama administration, on Best Buy screens across the planet, and at VIP reception and Awards Ceremony hosted by Sony Pictures in Los Angeles

This sixty second YouTube spot summarizes the project and contest. If you have any of the “digital natives” Marc Prensky talks about on the “digital_nation” website in your classroom or household, you might give them a heads-up on this contest.

Cross-posted to the Infinite Thinking Machine.

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Did you know Oklahoma is home to a growing black bear population and just had its first open hunting season for bears this year? Brad Hill used photos from his own game camera to create the 1 min, 17 second video, “Bears of Leflore County.”

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

When you think of tar pits, you might think of southern California and La Brea. You also should think of Lawton, Oklahoma! Alba Dissinger used her own photos to create and share the video “Fort Sill Tar Pit” to tell about this unique archeological site in Oklahoma.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Do you know the bison herd in Western Oklahoma in the Wichita Mountains was repopulated thanks to several bison sent from New York and the Bronx Zoo? These facts and many more are shared by Sydney Perry in her video, “Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.” Sidney used the free website drop.io to have friend and refuge docent Katherine Hunt narrate this six minute video using her cell phone!

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Kacey Kinsey leads a Girls’ Circle each week in the after-school program at her school, and it continues to make a HUGE difference in the lives of students who participate. Her video “Girls Circle” tells this story, including the voices of her students.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

What’s the longest marriage you’ve heard of? Michelle LeAnn Slay’s grandparents have been married for 70 years! Michelle used iMovie along with Audacity to create the touching video, “70 Years of Love and Marriage” during our COV workshop this week.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Isn’t it amazing to see the creative and powerful media messages Oklahoma educators can craft in an intensive, 2.5 day workshop on digital storytelling?! All these videos and more (494 in all, as of this writing) are available for FREE and OPEN access in our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices online learning community. Our collaborative storytelling efforts continue! Great work, Oklahoma educators!

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The Five Fighting Starrs of Oklahoma tells the amazing story of Paul Starr’s grandfather and five of his sons who all fought in World War II. Each returned to the United States (most to Oklahoma) to raise families and enjoy the freedom they had fought to hard to give and preserve to/for others. This video reminds me of Hollywood movies “Saving Private Ryan” and the TV miniseries “Band of Brothers.” Remarkable stories like this are often right in our own neighborhoods and households. Paul did a great job sharing this tale, and is enthused to be able to share it with the two remaining Starr brothers who are still alive, as well as other members of his family at an upcoming family reunion this fall.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

“Not that Depressing at All” is Jett Pilcher’s story of his relatives who chose to leave Oklahoma during the great depression and become labled as “Okies,” but returned to northeastern Oklahoma to get away from California city life and return to the land they knew and loved. Jett did a great job in this video interspersing his own narration with interview audio recorded with his mom. The use of original family photos really enhances the impact of Jett’s story and video.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

“East meets West” is Christina Conley’s story of her mother from Taiwan who met and married her father, a full-blooded Cherokee Indian, when he was serving there during the 1950s in the U.S. Navy.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Christina brought an entire suitcase of old, family photos to our COV workshop on day 2, and found the family photos she used in her video among them!

“Our piece of the puzzle” by Danielle Williams tells the touching story of how her family has dealt with the diagnosis of autism. This video particularly struck a chord with me because of the continuing work my wife is doing with an autism support group for families in Edmond, where we live. Danielle did a great job sharing her story as well as her heart in this video. When teachers in our COV workshops share their videos at the end of the workshop, I think it often becomes a powerful time of bonding and sharing. It’s not every day we have opportunities to see deeply into the lives and hearts of our co-workers, and the COV project provides that opportunity in many cases when educators choose to share issues near and dear to them through media.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

“From Fight To Flight” is another parent perspective story from educator Crystal Coppedge. The video is inspirational because of the way her son has dealt with Aspergers Syndrome and refused to let this diagnosis define him in the eyes of others or to himself. It is SO important we help students understand the importance of respecting others and seeing that everyone does not walk in the same footprints that we do ourselves. Digital video can be used powerfully to help us see the world through others’ eyes, and gain a bit more insight into worldviews as well as challenges which may be quite different from our own.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Great work, teachers in Kansas, Oklahoma!

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