Free Online Curriculum Helps Teachers Take Storytelling Into The Digital Age (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

All Press Releases for November 9, 2008

Free Online Curriculum Helps Teachers Take Storytelling Into The Digital Age

Target Stores team with cultural institutions on a limited-time offer to provide
a cutting-edge program for teaching digital storytelling, empowering ordinary
people to preserve their oral historie

Taos, NM (PRWEB) November 9, 2008 -- Target Stores, Scholastic, and the National
Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, have partnered with Sube
Learning language thru Art, Music and Games (www.sube.com), a New Mexico-based
innovator in language education, to offer a free online curriculum designed to
bring Digital Storytelling training to the widest possible population. This
powerful new medium allows ordinary people, with little computer experience and
with readily available electronic tools, to create three- to four-minute video
clips that can be played on a computer, shared as an email or played on a
television.

"We've created a set of lesson plans that takes the teacher through the process,
step by step, of how to teach Digital Storytelling to youth," explains Sube,
Inc. founder Agnes Chavez, an educator, artist and curriculum developer who has
been training people in Digital Storytelling since 2002. "We took the workshop
manual that was created over the years, adapted it for a school environment,
and aligned it with the National Language Arts Standards. The same curriculum
is used for adults. "

The complete curriculum is available for free downloading on
www.scholastic.com/dreamincolor/digitalstorytelling/ and on
https://www.sube.com/home/sube-community/digital-storytelling. Comprising eight
easy-to-use lesson plans and a wealth of teacher resources, the curriculum
breaks down the process of combining scraps of multimedia materials (such as
photographs, drawings, music clips and other memorabilia) with the
storyteller's own words to create a unique story.

Target originally intended to offer the lessons online until late 2008, as part
of its Dream in Color cultural-heritage initiative. But the Digital
Storytelling curriculum has proved so popular that Target recently extended its
availability until December 2009.

Another national cultural organization, the Indigenous Language Institute in
Santa Fe, New Mexico, also hired Chavez to teach Digital Storytelling workshops
to Native American language teachers, who then went back to their communities to
pass on the skills. "One of our focuses is to help all Indian communities
develop their own materials in their Native languages," explains Inee
Slaughter, executive director of the Indigenous Languages Institute. "So we
require participants to create pieces that are 75 percent or more in their
Native language using our Languagegeek © keyboard enablement."

Since partnering with Sube, Inc. in 2007, the Indigenous Language Institute has
helped 25 indigenous language groups produce digital stories stories about
history, place names, traditional songs, humor, and migration stories. A
selection of these works--many with English subtitles--are available for
viewing on the website www.ilinative.org/Showcase.

Both the Indigenous Language Institute and the National Hispanic Cultural Center
found that Digital Storytelling was an innovative way to deepen community and to
bring generations together. "It's a really natural extension of oral
storytelling and how we used to share our stories with our families around the
dinner table and at holidays," comments Dr. Shelle Sanchez, education director
for the National Hispanic Cultural Center. "Anybody from age five to eighty
five can create these stories, and they can be archived and shared without a
major television network deciding whether they're good enough. A grandmother
can make a digital story and email it to her grandkids. It's happened!"

"A lot of intergenerational teamwork goes into creating a digital story," adds
the Indigenous Language Institute's Slaughter. "Most of the people who know the
stories are the elders, but they're not always comfortable with the computer.
And the younger person may not know the Native language [of his or her tribe],
because youth now are so immersed into the mainstream culture. So a lot of our
Digital Storytelling has been based on an apprentice-mentorship model. Bringing
today's technology into language work really draws in the young people."

As a trainer and developer of the Sube Digital Storytelling curriculum, Chavez
feels that her role is "like that of farmers who pass on their seeds to
families and communities, who then plant and cultivate them." She notes that,
thanks to the support of the National Hispanic Cultural Center since 2002 and
their unique partnership, people in low-income and rural communities have been
empowered to preserve and disseminate their stories. And the digital stories
produced through the Indigenous Language Institute "were especially rewarding
because they were made in the Native language, and that is the driving vision
behind Sube, Inc., finding ways to empower people to preserve their language
and culture.

"We have adapted the Digital Storytelling process and tools so that no media
experience or money is required, and is easy to learn," she adds. "All the
software is free and easily accessible. It really helps break down that digital
divide by putting media in hands of people who normally wouldn't have access.
And, because it's digital, it's easy to share via the web or email or uploaded
to YouTube."

Based in Taos, N.M., Chavez founded Sube, Inc, in 1996 to develop innovative
ways to teach language and cultural diversity in our schools, communities and
homes. The company develops and distributes a line of multimedia products for
home and classroom use that empower teachers and parents to teach Spanish or
English as a second language by incorporating art, music and games. In 2002 she
expanded her language program to include Digital Story¬telling workshops. Chavez
leads international workshops for these programs and continues to develop
innovative approaches that educate on preserving language, culture and
ecological diversity, in the classrooms and in the community. The company's
vision is predicated on the belief that learning more than one language
develops in children a global awareness crucial to their success in the world
today. For further information or to schedule an interview with Chavez, contact
Sube learning Language thru Art, Music & Games at 575-758-1387 or learn @
sube.com, or visit www.sube.com.