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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.
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