Living & Arts

Faculty and staff tell stories in the digital age

In print | January 22, 2009

While digital technologies threaten to further and further isolate our everyday existence, a small gathering on the Swarthmore campus found that these tools could instead be harnessed for the purposes of communication and community building. From Jan. 7-9 and 12-14, Information Technology Services hosted two three-day Digital Storytelling Workshops that were attended by 21 staff and faculty members. Run by the Center for Digital Storytelling, a California-based non-profit organization, the workshops gave participants the opportunity to produce a personal video essay and share a side of themselves less often seen by their colleagues during the academic year.

Having brought the idea down from her previous position at Williams College, Chief Information Technology Officer Gayle Barton, along with her associate Eric Behrens, organized the first workshop in the beginning of June last year. Though only eight participated, the workshop was so well received that ITS decided to give staff and faculty the opportunity twice more this break.

“We wanted to create an example of a new genre of digital storytelling, somewhere between personal movie and slideshow,” Behrens said of the workshop. “During it, each participant writes an original script, and then does a voice-over recording from reading that script. Then, they work with images and video to lay over the voice-over.”

Working with stories of a more personal interest made it easier for participants of any technological background to learn the craft of video editing. “They probably have photographs or have access to images or video that are related to the project, so it makes it easier,” Behrens said.

Facilitated by instructors from the Center for Digital Storytelling, participants were able to develop their stories with one another. Becky Robert, the Visitor Programs Coordinator for the Scott Arboretum, said, “We did something called story circle, which [was] a way to brainstorm with a group of people and help you work out your idea.”

It turns out that even the most unassuming subject makes for a video essay worth seeing. As Administrative Assistant of the Education Studies Department as well as activist and labor organizer, Kae Kalwaic had a host of efforts that she could have chosen to narrate for the workshop last summer as well as her return to a lifelong passion for figure skating.

Coming into the workshop, Kalwaic said, “I was kind of torn whether to cover ice skating or whether to cover activism.” Rather than picking and choosing, her final product “On the Edge” confronts and reconciles the two activities. The video ends with Kalwaic recalling an Emma Goldman quote: “A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.”

Since the workshop, Kalwaic has found herself getting more and more wired in. She now writes a blog and has created several more video essays, including a recent one that documents Obama’s train to his inauguration passing by Chester.

Kalwaic is also finding that her newfound videography skills are more and more useful in her line of work. One of the organizations she is associated with, the DelCo Alliance for Environmental Justice, recently posted a YouTube video about a tire plant being constructed in Chester. The video contributed to community awareness, and eventually plans to build the plant were stopped. “I realized how powerful it was to get something up on YouTube,” Kalwaic said, as a result of DelCo’s Alliance success with the video. “It definitely is a tool that I’m going to be using because I think it’s something that speaks to people.”

The fruits of the workshop have also found their way into some Swarthmore classes. Having taken the workshop the past June, Michael Jones, the Director of the Language Resource Center, was able to integrate the process into the midterm exams of three Modern Languages and Literatures courses last semester by giving its students a sequence of images that they had to narrate. Jones said, “What you’re trying to do in languages class is you’re trying to get people to use some of the vocabulary that they’re learning and reapply it to new circumstances.” He plans to apply the activity to several classes this semester as well.

For Behrens, one of the great assets of the workshop was bringing together a blend of faculty and staff from different departments. “I’ve heard from everybody that that was one of the really great strengths of it, that it’s a community building exercise,” he said. Even for Professor Weinberg, who does not have plans to integrate video storytelling into his teaching, the workshop was “worth doing.”

“It was wonderful because you got to spend three days with other colleagues,” Weinberg said. “I got to learn more about people that I didn’t know very much about because we each had very personal stories to tell … It was a very welcoming place for people to bare their souls.”