Forensic Science by Anita Cosby (An introduction to forensic science class)

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Starbase 2011 by Pamela Sue Gilder (Video about a fifth grade class during their six week adventure through Strarbase)

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Ben Franklin Science Academy’s Friendship Garden “The Green Patch” by Sandra Marie Riley (A story about the “Green Patch” that touched a community)

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It will be great to see the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) related videos our workshop participants create next week at OSU! More information about hosting and requesting a Storychasers workshop is available on the frequently asked questions (FAQ) page of our website.

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The Cherokee Language by Janice Ballou tells the story of family gatherings in ‘days gone by’ when stories were shared in Cherokee. According to Janice, “stories are always funnier and scarier when they are told in Cherokee!” Janice also interviewed kindergarten teacher Faye Ross, who explained how she teaches her students the Cherokee language to enhance their cultural literacy and pride in their Cherokee heritage.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Mom’s Pretty Boy Floyd Story by Tambra Dewey is an adorable interview with Tambra’s mother, who relates a story she was told as a child by her grandmother who used to cook and give shelter to Pretty Boy Floyd and his gang in the 1930s near Salina, Oklahoma.

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Kenwood Cultural Day Presentation by Wanda Wilson McBride describes Kenwood School’s 2011 Cultural Day which celebrated Cherokee culture. Her retelling made me want to bring my own kids to this special event next year!

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Kenwood School Cherokee Choir by Faye Ross features an interview with music teacher Janice Ballou. The Kenwood Choir has traveled and shared the Cherokee language as well as songs in a remarkable number of places including Washington DC and Japan. “Through the music, kids can express themselves, and that is why I love sharing music in the Cherokee language.” I LOVE the music tracks Faye included in this video!

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Grandmother’s Story by Annetta M Bundy tells the remarkable tale of Annetta’s grandmother who “led a busy life with two husbands and twelve children (including a set of identical twin girls.” The hardships of the past can barely be comprehended by students today who are blessed with so many things as well as opportunities. Digital stories like this one can help us connect and remember.

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If you are trying to view these videos on an iOS device like an iPad or iPhone, I encourage you to use the Skyfire Web Browser ($3) to convert the Flash-format videos on the fly to a format readable on Apple mobile devices. We are in the process of working on a transcoding solution for our videos on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices, as well as Celebrate Kansas Voices and Celebrate Texas Voices.

If you are in or near Oklahoma or Kansas, please register to attend one of our two day digital storytelling workshops this summer! Our opportunities to digitally create, learn and share continue!

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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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.

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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!

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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.

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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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According to the school’s YouTube channel description:

KEC TV is an award winning television news program that is broadcasted to the 500 students at KEC/Canal Point Elementary. The news program is completely produced by a selected group of 5th and 6th grade students.

KEC TV student reporter Damon Weaver’s dream was to interview President Barack Obama. For over nine months Damon and his teacher (Brian Zimmerman) have worked very hard to obtain an interview with Barack Obama. On Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 2:25 pm Damon’s dream came true when he interviewed President Obama in the White House.

I would like to thank President Obama’s White House Press staff for helping us secure the interview. I would also like to thank all of our friends in the media for all of their support. Last I would like to thank all of the people in the world that have supported Damon Weaver as he pursued his dream.

The school’s YouTube channel has over 90 videos, including many other interviews conducted by Damon and other students. WOW.

According to Education Week’s August 17th article, “Media Savvy Helps Student Reporter Land Obama Interview,”

There’s a good chance you’ve already heard or seen Damon’s story. During the 2008 presidential election, he and his classmates from Kathryn E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary School received national media attention for the election coverage they were producing at their school’s news station, KEC-TV. Damon led the newsroom’s coverage by talking with many of Barack Obama’s supporters, including this interview with now Vice President Joe Biden which spread quickly across the Web.

Brian Zimmerman, the KEC-TV news club director and Damon’s teacher, oversaw the election coverage. He helped Damon and his classmates gain access to press events, so that the students could produce and edit broadcast segments like professional journalists. The resulting work has been posted online to video-sharing sites, including KEC-TV’s own YouTube channel, which has attracted nearly 50,000 page views.

According to Scott Wykoff:

[Damon] Weaver, son of a single mom, lives in the town of Pahokee, which is about 77 miles northwest of Miami and plagued with crime and poverty. He attends Kathryn E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary and is the lead broadcaster for their in-house KEC TV station.

Way to go storychaser Damon!

H/T to Eric Dawson for this link. On September 8, 2009, President Obama is expected to address students in the U.S. live over a videoconference. More information should be forthcoming on the White House website as well as the Department of Education’s website.

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Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Renee personifies the concept of a “digital witness” in this video because she powerfully communicated with images and audio the experiences, emotions, and observations she made when she personally witnessed the inauguration of President Barack Obama. As humans, our brains are wired for stories. When we hear someone tell a story like this about their own life, particularly when they draw deeply upon their own background experiences and life history in reflecting on the event, the resulting story can be an extremely memorable anecdote we may carry with us for a long time. Renee added music from the actual event to her video as well, to further communicate the sounds and emotions of President Obama’s inauguration day.

Several of the ideas and phrases Renee shared in this video were also quoted in the February 6, 2009, Hugo Daily News article, “Mrs. Hall Goes to Washington.” These are some of her quotations from her interview with a local Hugo reporter.

My husband and my birthdays are on Jan. 18, and 19, so we usually try to do something… So he said ‘let’s go to the inauguration.’ Well, I had thought about it back in November and so we thought it would be something fun to go to. We just decided that we couldn’t miss this event…. We lived through segregation, segregated schools, separate water fountains and the whole bit… So we never thought we would see this day. This is just something that you really didn’t think was possible. You didn’t think we had evolved as far as the hope of Martin Luther King. That is what really drove us to want to go… We went to a special event at the Smithsonian on the Monday before the inauguration. The event was in honor of Martin Luther King. At the very end of the program we all joined hands and sang ‘We Shall Overcome.’ While this was going on, I looked around at all the people –– young, old, black, white –– with tears in their eyes singing that song. There was a feeling of overpowering love and unity there among all the people… We lived through a generation where we had to walk around with downcast eyes… In the old days, my great-grandparents, who were slaves, would be killed just for looking a white person in the eyes. To be able to lift your eyes as Obama lifted his hand to take the oath, he lifted the hopes of a lot of people. Young people now know that with hard work and sacrifice, the American Dream is possible… I certainly never thought that I would live to see a black man become President of the United States… So the expectations have been raised. And a lot of kids are looking up to this man because he has achieved something that we did not think he would be able to achieve. He raised the hopes of many Americans and showed us that the things that are promised in the Constitution are meant for all of us. This gives our young people something to hope for… Black people alone make up a small percentage of people in this country… So we are not the ones that put Obama in office. So just to know that the world is changing from the way it was and it is evolving into that great nation that it was always meant to be. We are living up to those ideals that the forefathers had in mind… The whole event was truly inspiring… It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I will never forget it. I will be able to tell my grandson when he is studying, that I was there and I witnessed this event.

If you have created or seen other videos like this which exemplify someone being a “digital witness,” as Rene Hall was here, please consider adding it to the StoryChasers blog. You can register as a guest blogger, and after review your submitted post will be approved to be published.

As a non-profit organization, Storychasers wants to amplify and share constructive examples of “digital witnesses” using video, audio, images, and text to record and share personal perspectives about history, current events, and everyday living. As of this writing in August 2009, over four hundred videos created by Oklahoma teachers and students are available on the “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices” learning community. Many of these short films fit this definition of a “digital witness” video. In upcoming weeks we’ll be asking COV project facilitators to join our Storychasers’s blog and share some of their favorite COV video examples. If you haven’t yet subscribed and added Storychasers to your Google Reader (or other feed reader / aggregator) please do! While the primary project currently sponsored by Storychasers focuses specifically on Oklahoma, as an organization we have a national / international focus and do not / will not focus exclusively on digital storytelling and being a “digital witness” only in a single state or region.

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