This week John Kuner will present a paper he co-authored with Steve Vosloo at the 3rd International Conference on Communities and Technologies at Michigan State University. The paper Mobile Storytelling and Video Sharing for Inter-Cultural Communication: How Personal Expression Leads to Job Skill will be presented during one of the conference workshops.
Add comment June 27th, 2007
Steve Vosloo has volunteered as a participant in a survey by the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, CA. The short study explores the space between the influences and decisions related to buying something (off line or online) and the actual purchase itself, as well as the mediating role that mobile devices play therein. Study participants will be taking photos of products from within shops and immediately recording the emotions around a purchase via their phones and the web.
Add comment June 23rd, 2007
Last week Steve Vosloo assisted in the inaugural 3-day Digital Storytelling Workshop for Educators at the Center for Digital Storytelling, Berkeley, CA. Eleven participants, mostly teachers from across the USA, created their own short digital stories — following the classic digital storytelling process, including participation in a story circle, writing and recording scripts and the production of the stories using digital technology — and also shared experiences and ideas of incorporating digital storytelling into classrooms.
In the USA, digital storytelling can be fitted into curricula standards for writing/language arts, communications and social studies. A challenge is that digital storytelling actually provides learning opportunities that are not accounted for or measured within the standard curricula content and tests.
One of the participating teachers, Ben Grey, has had his 5th-grade students create and publish podcasts about school and community-related content in a project called News from the Greypevine.
Add comment June 23rd, 2007
The second day of the “UN meets Silicon Valley” conference was open to the public. The event was organized by Intel and the UN Global Alliance for ICT & Development (UN GAID). Held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, it provided an interesting opportunity to explore the overlap between the developmental agenda of the UN and associated non-profit organizations and the market-driven, entrepreneurial and high-tech innovative spirit of Silicon Valley.
An extensive summary of the day by UN staff will be posted on the UN GAID website.
As an aside, Steve Vosloo and a few of other Digital Vision Fellows met Dr Craig Barrett, Chairman of Intel.
Add comment February 28th, 2007
Steve Vosloo recently met Linda Johnson, Executive Director of Streetside Stories, a San Francisco-based non-profit literacy arts program. In 13 years, it has helped over 7000 students to share their life stories, connect with the arts, and improve their literacy skills. There is much overlap between the work of Molotech and Streetside Stories. Steve hopes to volunteer on their Tech Tales digital storytelling program and learn from this wonderful organization.
Add comment February 27th, 2007
Steve Vosloo met with Sarah Kramer of StoryCorps to introduce the Digital Hero Book Project (DHBP) and ask for general advice. StoryCorps is a US-based project to instruct and inspire people to record each others’ stories in sound. Sarah made very useful suggestions, building on what Joe had spoken about. They discussed interview questions for the DHBP participants, logistics around doing the actual audio recordings, e.g. at different schools using a portable kit or at a permanent studio where the school learners come to record for a day.
Add comment December 21st, 2006
Steve Vosloo met with Joe Richman of Radio Diaries to introduce the Digital Hero Book Project (DHBP) and ask for general advice. The award-winning Radio Diaries “works with ordinary people to document their own lives for public radio.” For example, Thembi’s AIDS Diary covers a year in the life of a South African teenager who is struggling to live with AIDS.
Joe offered this advice on producing good quality audio stories: 1) it’s a real skill to produce compelling audio, 2) it takes a lot more time to edit than you think, so 3) if you’re working with a group of youth, make their involvement as simple as possible, e.g. get them to interview each other, read from prepared texts or record very short sound bites such as their dog barking.
Add comment December 19th, 2006
Steve Vosloo headed up to Boston for the day to meet with Gail Breslow, Director of the Intel Computer Clubhouse project. The very first computer clubhouse is located at the Museum of Science in Boston. Today there are 100 clubhouses around the world, each providing a creative and safe after-school learning environment where young people from under-served communities work with adult mentors to explore their own ideas, develop skills, and build confidence in themselves through the use of technology.
Add comment December 15th, 2006
Steve Vosloo spent 5 days in Athens at the Internet Governance Forum, a UN event to discuss issues such as freedom of expression, censorship, multilingualism, local content, etc. He was there to be on a panel to discuss Emerging Issues from a Youth Perspective. The panel was held at the closing ceremony, about 400 people in the audience.
Steve spoke about the Digital Hero Book Project, explaining the need for physical access to ICTs and good bandwidth, and for fora such as this to keep exploring ways of creating safe and free — as in free expression — online spaces for youth.
He wrote a short piece on the significance of the event, from a UN perspective.
Add comment November 27th, 2006
Steve Vosloo just completed a 3-day workshop at the Center for Digital Storytelling. It was lots of fun to go through the whole process of writing a script, collecting and editing images, recording an audio narration, and weaving it all together in video editing software. Some of the youths participating in the Digital Hero Book Project (DHBP) will have the opportunity to tell their digital story in the form of a short movie.
The Center for Digital Storytelling is a partner with Molotech in the DHBP and will provide assistance with curriculum development of the digital storytelling aspect of the project.
Add comment November 18th, 2006
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Molotech is a section 21 company (Reg No: 2003/030919/08)
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