Copyright

I attended the Making The Most of Copyright workshop on Wednesday 22 August and it was very interesting. The focus was on Copyright issues for schools, universities, TAFE and RTO's which was really useful. As a participant who does not work in an organisation such as these I still found the information useful (we do work with RTOs). There have been some amendments to the copyright act and the impact of those changes was dicussed and debated. The websites that were useful to follow up all the questions you have are as follows: http://copyrightkitchen.flexiblelearning.net.au/main.php and http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/
It was a great opportunity to network and discuss issues around copyright.
John

Voki

Hi everyone, Kate here. Thanks for introducing me to Voki!! It is a lot of fun, and Belinda and I have just spent at least half an hour playing around with characters and voices. I hope to have some more time to play at a later date, especially to see how much the character can say, and if you can have more than one scene. Has anyone got the answer to these questions?

Some neat links

hi all

There is an edna group (educators online forum) around digital stories… I had a quick check and saw there were HEAPS of tools and tips. Have a look at http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/course/view.php?id=107 I am going to join up, it looks like gold!

Also check out this short conference paper, it’s a good ‘overview’ of digital storytelling… http://www.icvet.tafensw.edu.au/powerhouse_2005/papers/telling_tales2.pdf

cheers, Nicci

2007_07_20 Things are hotting up!!

Our last get together was a fun, creative and a lively affair. We went over a few process items at the begining of our meeting and then arrived the majestic Lisa Phillip-Harbutt who thrilled us with some great perspectives on how to evoke description and context for story telling. Lisa suggested asking people to describe how parts of stories may taste, feel, the social implications, texture and messages left as a way of providing the story teller with a more full and rich form of expression. Lisa also suggested cultral mapping as a way of describing the events which lead to the story.

Of personal significants was Lisa's description of the continuousness of stories and how there is the experience the makes the story, the telling of the story, the impact of people hearing the story (also the impact for the person telling the story) and those people who choose to relate their experience of hearing that story. Lisa is FANTASTIC!!!!!

Lisa had some suggestions of how we could help with the sharing of stories such as giving people (groups) disposible cameras with themes like: 11am snapshots of your life, out my back door, what I see (disability or not), making the alphablet out of items in your house (can even make sentences. It was suggested to set a story theme before handing out cameras!

We were then treated to Luku, one really cool guy who has a fantastic approach to life and art. He called himself a fluppeteer (Flash puppetry) and showed us some of his great works of animated avatars (see our voki avatars down below). Luku was inspiring and a great presenter who evoked many thougths and possiblilties for our project.

Luku had also redeveloped one of the Photostories and included one of his flupavatars (I made that up just then) with some awesome results. It was a great way to view the story and have a character speaking (or lipsyncing). The flupavatars have different mouth shapes which are moved in sync with the words spoken. Luku has started by showing us a peice of his work which was displayed at Adelaide train station on the multil media screens. Wow it was unreal and a great way to introduce us to his incredibile abilities. For those who could not make it you really missed out big time.

Nicci will make the resources available somehow, sometime soonish so keep checking out the blog site.

Yours in creativity John McK

Being part of the group

I have recently joined this fantastic project and am very excited about the possibilites that it presents. I am meeting with one of the other participants to look at the cool tools that Learnscope has available and how they can be useful for the project. I will keep you posted on the results. Love John

an online avatar

Marlene alerted us to this online avatar-making program... its a good one, but like all the others, must be saved/viewed online.

You can see my voki avatar at the bottom of this page....

....and check out John's as well

Make your own at http://www.voki.com/ and post it to this site!!

Expertise is coming...

Hi all

I have been busy finding people who can help us learn... check them out more through their links...

Lisa Phillip-Harbutt, Director of Community Arts Network SA. Lisa will speak to us at our July meeting about community storytelling processes. www.cansa.on.net

Luku, an animator/artist whodoes some work for Carclew and freelances. Luku will bring some animation characters to the July meeting for us to see how we could use them to build 'avatars' and personalise the stories. www.luku.com.au

Coming to the August meeting (to be confirmed) will be Sonja Vivienne, an independant fimmaker who has worked with lots of communities to help them tell their stories. Sonja can help us scope and get processes right. www.incitestories.com.au

Get together 21.6.07

All present except for Heidi, who is travelling the world!
We began with a discussion about how this project will impact on our work - and how we feel about the project.
Some of the points made are:

• we wonder how the teminology affects workers, and how they will respond to our request
• a good knowledge of the language and terminology allows us to interact and join in
• it would be good to write up a process so that we can all access the technology
• we've learnt what we needed at a particular time/purpose but that can be quite a narrow use of the technology that is available.
• we already feel somewhat overwhelmed by our current use of technology - how many things do we have to check just to see if someone is trying to contact us?
• this project will enable us to learn new skills and relate it to parts of our work, such as
• gathering stories;
• recording our personal stories;
• as a therapeutic strand
• as a safe space to tell stories
• we hope to build a library of stories - but wonder how that will be moderated

With our project we hope to allow community to articulate their story, and the technology allows them to reflect at the same time they are developing the story. It allows an outside perspective

We need to develop processes around developing stories with groups.

This project will provide starting points and ways of exploring the story chain. Taking the bsic idea and seeing how far you can stretch it in collaborative ways.

The project could be part of identity formation in the APY lands, especially for new youth workers in the community

The project is also a personal learning journey into technology for us and for the groups we work with in rural and remote locations, who at present may only be using emails

It offers a range of ways to express oneself - and can be anonymous. We are also aware of the immense power of visuals, and wish to utilise that.

We then spoke about follow up training and providing a forum for participants to seek clarification and further discussion.

We wonder how we can use the technology as an assessment tool

We also value all the incidental learning along the way, but realise that the focus is on developing programs that enable storytelling.

Consultation framework

It's time to contact our identified service providers/stakeholders/clients... you know, the community and health workers in a variety of settings, remote and otherwise. I have put together a template to get you started... you can paste it into word and print it out ready for your phone call or visit, or just use it as a guide for your own version.

Obviously the more data the better, so gather as many of these consults as you like - but only secure 1 of those for the workshop. Remember we need to find about 7 providers for the final workshop, so if we can all aim to get one each, that should do it.


‘Narrative Technologies’ consultation framework: service providers

Your name

Date of consultation

Method of consultation

Provide overview of project
Ø Work-based learning project
Ø Partnership between Hepatitis C Council of SA and Relationships Australia (SA)
Ø To investigate the use of storytelling using digital media as a hepatitis C educational tool
Ø To provide remote service providers with useful and engaging tools to use with their clients
Ø Clients can access hep C stories told by a range of people in SA
Ø Clients can tell their own stories using a non-identifying format
Ø Guidelines around creation and sharing of tools will be provided
Ø All tools will be free, easy to access and use

Why we are doing this consult
Ø A range of service providers contacted
Ø To understand the nature of your work
Ø Understand the range of educational settings
Ø Identify opportunities for using narrative tools

Name of provider

Organisation

Position in organisation

Location of work

Nature (description) of work setting

Nature of work activities concerning hep C education

Typical client profile

Access to technology, programs

Confidence using technology in educational context

Possible opportunities for using tools

Any other issues, concerns or ideas

Follow up actions

Attend workshop late October?
Ø Full day, travel and accommodation paid
Ø Meet other consultants
Ø We demonstrate tools to you
Ø Collect your feedback
Ø Together, plan use of tools

Record contact details

Some interesting links to browse

Hi all

If you have time, need inspiration or are putting off report-writing, check out these sites:

http://www.coe.uh.edu/digital-storytelling/default.htm

http://www.jasonohler.com/storytelling/

http://www.acmi.net.au/digitalstorytelling.jsp

http://www.storycenter.org/index1.html

http://www.units.muohio.edu/technologyandhumanities/field.htm

http://www.storycenter.org/memvoice/pages/cookbook.html


and if you need more links..... http://www.tech-head.com/dstory.htm

Inspiration

I just came back from a few days in Melboune at the Hep C Health Promotion conference... it was very encouraging to hear the positives that the Hep C Council of SA are getting for the digital stories we have produced so far... people are accessing and using them from our website. Cool! and it seems that no-one else is doing anything with stories as educational tools.

The national body, Hepatitis Australia, is almost ready to lauch their new e-learning website, and they will link the digital stories from there. It made me resolve to get on and write some support/teaching material for those stories! I am sure that whatever we produce from this project will be welcomed by the (hep C health promotion) sector.

ciaow, Nicci

First meeting

It’s exciting to be at this point.. I feel like we’re on the cusp of heaps of learning, playing with technology, and creative experimentation.

We had our first meeting with everyone (except Deborah, who couldn’t be there) and huddled around a tiny coffee table with bits of paper overflowing… we made it through a mad agenda and managed to be productive at the same time.

First we looked at our understanding of what ‘narrative technologies’ means and developed some tentative criteria for beginning our searches for the appropriate programs, which will no doubt be refined as we discover the scope of what’s available.

Criteria for appropriate narrative technology programs:
Ø Options with the program – different levels of input (for flexibility of use)
Ø Simple to use – ‘low’ tech (suitable for all users)
Ø Accessible (easy to find, load and use)
Ø Truly representative (captures the stories well)
Ø Community-authored capabilities (not requiring expertise)
Ø Easy to grasp (does not require intensive instruction to use)
Ø Convertible to different formats (for sending, saving and posting etc)

I forgot to include this one on our list- but I think it also needs to be cost-free to use.

We also looked at who our health and community service providers might be (for consultation). We were looking for a range of settings, concentrating on rural, regional & remote settings, and came up with this as a starting place:

Service providers to target:
Ø Medical/clinic setting
Ø Counselling/therapeutic setting
Ø DASSA workers in a variety of settings
Ø Aboriginal health workers
Ø Corrections workers – nurse & educator
Ø PEACE peer educators

We also identified the support material that we would need to provide (in addition to the actual tools/program themselves) in order to make it usable for the service providers:

Support material needed:
Ø Guidelines for facilitating storytelling
Ø Resources for storytelling (free music, pictures, etc)
Ø Protocols for confidentiality and publishing

We will also need to look at how stories can be shared, accessed and stored. At the very least, this can happen through the Hepatitis C Councils website, which is moderated. Once we learn more from our service providers about how they might use the stories, we can pay more attention to this.


Meetings: PUT THESE DATES IN YOUR DIARIES NOW!!

Thursday 21 June 1:00 – 4:30 @ HCCSA
Friday 20 July 1:00 – 4:30 @ HCCSA
Thursday 23 August 1:00 – 4:30 @ HCCSA
Thursday 20 September 1:00 – 4:30 @ HCCSA
Thursday 18 October 1:00 – 4:30 @ HCCSA
Monday 12 November 9:00 – 12:30 @ HCCSA

Other business:
Ø Leslie agreed to be deputy Learning Facilitator
Ø Deb will be deputy Project Manager
Ø Nicci will organise speakers for June meeting – ‘facilitating storytelling’
Ø Andrew will post FlickR photos or images
Ø Heidi will set up the Protopage on the Learnscope website
Ø Nicci will produce a ‘standard rave’ for giving to targeted service providers and send to all team members via email
Ø Participants will make sure this blog captures everything we are doing and all team members to contribute with their own actions, findings, reflections etc