Case Studies in K-12 and Higher Education

Centre for Community Learning & Development: Literacy and Basic Skills Program
http://tccld.org
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The Centre for Community Learning & Development (CCL&D), home base for CDS’ efforts in Ontario, Canada, promotes the use of learning, digital storytelling, leadership development, and the building of healthy organizations as vehicles for responding to community-based challenges and as key aspects of initiatives that can lead to positive social change. In 2009, CCL&D integrated digital storytelling into its Academic Skills Upgrading Program (Literacy & Basic Skills). Workshops were conducted as part of the program’s writing, presentation, and computer classes, creating a holistic approach to participants’ learning and personal development.

The Digital Hero Book Project
http://digitalherobook.org
Cape Town, South Africa
In 2006, the Center began a collaboration with South Africa-based Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative (REPSSI) to develop methods for bringing REPSSI’s paper “Hero Books” – collections of short stories written and illustrated by young people to explore their challenges and potentials – into the digital realm. A pilot workshop with seventh grade learners was held in Cape Town in March, 2007, revealing the challenges of technology capacity building within the country’s under-resourced public education system.

Digital Underground Storytelling for Youth (DUSTY)
http://oaklanddusty.org/
Oakland, CA, U.S.A.
Back in the late 1990s, when the Center was based at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Education, staff worked with UCB faculty to initiate DUSTY, a digital storytelling research and practice lab serving low income communities in West and East Oakland. Nearly ten years later, DUSTY continues to bring together individuals and organizations-children, undergraduates, school teachers, community members, and professors-to learn, work, and play together through engaging in technology-based literacy activities.

Downtown Aurora Visual Arts (DAVA)
http://davarts.org/art_storiesB.html
Denver, CO, U.S.A.
Beginning in 2005, the Center has worked annually in a summer program for middle school youth sponsored by DAVA’s Computer Art lab, leading six to eight week extended digital storytelling workshops. Themes for these extended digital storytelling workshops have included “The Power of Word,” “Border Crossings,” and “Capturing our Community.” The workshops end with special evening story screenings for the youth, their parents, and local community residents. Stories from the program have been picked up by Colorado Public Radio and are now broadcast statewide, on a weekly basis.

Guardian Scholars at California State University, Fullerton
http://calstate.fullerton.edu/news/2005/storytelling.html
Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.
Beginning in 2004, the Center has led an intensive, four-day workshop/retreat each January with new Guardian Scholars at Cal State Fullerton—former foster youth who receive full tuition and expenses for college. A spin-off of our collaboration with the Y.O.UT.H. Training Project, the Guardian Scholars digital storytelling program has illustrated the immense value, to youth who grew up in care, of reflecting on their life experiences as they transition to higher education.

Institute for the Future
Palo Alto, CA, U.S.A.
Beginning in 1997, the Center has collaborated on several projects with the Institute of the Future, a scenario and forecast organization. In the early years, the work focused on looking at applications of digital storytelling knowledge management within large organizations; workshops were held with several corporations, including Hewlett Packard and PricewaterhouseCoopers. In 2001, the Center began a series of workshops that integrated the Institute for the Future’s ten year forecast models with the development of educational and community building projects. In 2008, the Center worked with the Institute to assist youth in creating stories about shifts in learning.

Kean University, Center for Innovative Education
Union, NJ, U.S.A.
Since 2005, the Center has collaborated with Kean University’s Center for Innovative Education (CIE) to offer a series of digital storytelling workshops to educators within the New Jersey consortium of Middle Schools. The Center has also participated in CIE’s 21st Century Learning Conferences and offered special workshops to train educators in digital storytelling. Today digital storytelling is widely recognized throughout New Jersey as an innovative, technology-based learning tool for the classroom.

Liberal Arts Colleges in the United States
Various Locations, U.S.A.
Since 2003, the Center has worked with numerous small to medium-sized private liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States. Ongoing workshops were developed with Williams College and now Swarthmore College, but we have also helped initiate interest at Middlebury College, Colgate, Hamilton and Simmons College, and other colleges tied to the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education. We have enabled these institutions to promote digital storytelling as a method for training faculty and staff on new media technology as well as a model teaching approach within the liberal arts curriculum.

Pasadena City College
Pasadena, CA, U.S.A.
In 2003, the Center collaborated with staff of City College and the Armory Center for the Arts to create a weeklong workshop for seventeen Pasadena-area high school students, designed to encourage their exploration of new media as a profession. During the five days, participants were guided through writing exercises, photography activities, and other processes, to support them in producing digital stories.

“The Project”: Another School and Another Community Are Possible
http://communitytv.org/programs/online/whats-happening-education-pt-1-0
Watsonville, CA, U.S.A.
As part of a collaboration with the University of California at Santa Cruz Department of Education and various local nonprofit groups, the Center has conducted two digital storytelling workshops and a facilitator training in support of “The Project.” This school reform/community development initiative is using digital stories to prompt dialogue among students, parents, teachers, and university faculty about how poverty and oppression impede mainstream, curriculum-based school reform efforts; encourage civic engagement; and initiate structural and economic changes to improve schools and communities in the Watsonville area.

Scott County, Kentucky: K-12 Educators Adopt Digital Storytelling
Georgetown, KY, U.S.A.
Back in 2000, the Center offered a digital storytelling workshop to a group of elementary and secondary school teachers in Scott County, Kentucky. This session led to a successful ongoing project that inspired countless Midwestern school districts to explore applications for digital storytelling within multiple curricular areas. Today, digital storytelling has been adopted as a teaching method by schools across the country and around the world.

Streetside Stories’ Tech Tales
http://streetside.org/stories/digital-stories.htm
San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.
In 2004, the Center partnered with Streetside Stories, a well-established leader in writing workshops with youth, to lead a program working with 300 seventh grade students. The process adapted Streetside's traditional writing curriculum and followed up with the recording and editing of digital stories by the participants. The program’s 2005-06 year was evaluated by Wested, in an effort to assess the impact of digital storytelling on student academic performance.

T-TEC: Trans-Bay Training and Education Collaborative
http://ccsf.edu/Resources/TTEC/about.html
San Francisco and Alameda Counties, CA; U.S.A.
In 2007, building on previous collaborations with City College of San Francisco, the Center led a workshop with former community health students as part of the T-TEC program. T-TEC focuses on supporting the employment and advancement of Community Health Workers, Social Services Paraprofessionals, and other frontline community health and social service providers who are trained at community colleges across California. The stories are being shared as an outreach tool to bring new students into these training programs.

University-Community (UC) Links
Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA; U.S.A.
From 1999-2003, the Center worked with staff and students engaged in the University of California’s systemwide service learning program, UC Links. Several workshops in Berkeley as well as one with the University of Calfornia, Los Angeles School of Education, emphasized building capacity for digital storytelling facilitation at local schools and community organizations, as well as using digital storytelling as a form of evaluation for participants in the UC links service learning program.

University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
http://umbc.edu/stories
Baltimore, MD, U.S.A.
Since 2004, the Center has worked with UMBC’s New Media Studio to train faculty and staff on the use of digital storytelling methods in undergraduate and graduate classes and service learning initiatives. An advanced workshop for faculty, held in 2006, focused on digital storytelling as a pedagogical tool and led to the adoption of the method across multiple UMBC teaching and research projects. As a result of the partnership, digital storytelling has become a sustainable practice at UMBC, where stories made by students have been received with critical acclaim.