Im a fan of many bloggers. I mean many.  When their blogs or stories move me, I let them know. I let them know why. One of my favorites told me that he doesn’t think of him self as a blogger, but someone who shares ideas like a photographer shares her/ his images. Blogging is the vehicle not the journey Nor the goal. He added, “It moves my ideas out and I value that because it helps me reach out.” Reaching out is the challenge, the goal. 

What is it you want to share? Why? Who are you writing to? As a photographer, I love to share a variety of things. The subject, object, the light, textures, the drama, the moment, the emotion, the story. Sometimes the goal of the image is product based. Sometimes it’s process based.  Ultimately, it’s not about the camera.  The goal is in your head. The camera is your tool to help communicate that idea.  This is important to note because we make the tool the goal and the focus sometimes.  This can be challenging when trying to connect with an audience around ideas.  A great writer/ storyteller engages an audience and makes them want to interact with the conent. They make people more curious, more interactive. As an educator, I always fought with the kids on writing.  It was such a distant skillset for them since they didn’t write a lot outside of school (now, it’s different due to texting, emailing).  Their audience was the teacher and the teacher would usually thrash their contribution with a barrage of red corrections.  The process of writing was the goal. The ideas were just prompts.  This created an artificial context.  In my education, we wrote 2 business letters that never went anywhere.  It was graded, red lined, and returned back to me where I studied it for .5 seconds (after seeing the grade), then, straight to my file cabinet– the trash can.  

Documentaries are more about what people say then what is seen. what is seen supports what is being said. I know it sounds simplistic, however, there’s an art and a science to getting the right interviews.

Here are a few tips on how to collect, curate, cultivate, and create a good interview:

1. Don’t call it an interview! Make it more about a conversation. Be curious. The authentic with your questions. Most people I have met like to talk about things they are passionate about. so, have a conversation with them about it. I genuinely am curious about the people I am interviewing. I really want to learn from them. I don’t look at my notes. I look at them. I listen. I ask clarifying questions. Because of the genuine questioning, your learning comes across in the story.

2. Make them comfortable. before shutting the camera in their face, get to know them. tell them you’re excited to learn from them, to talk to them about the topic or big idea you’re exploring. Coordinate with your camera person prior to the interview to check audio levels during this “get to know them” period. The camera person/audio person can check the light, audio levels while you get to know them. This also allows you to focus on the person you’re interviewing and not on equipment. If you’re doing this by yourself, know the locations ahead of time. if you’re doing sound, monitor the sound with one year bud, making sure you’re getting good levels while still being attentive to the person you’re talking to. The key tip here is have the interviewee think about how to prepare for the question as oppose to thinking about the right answer. Don’t provide your questions ahead of time. You can, however, share with them the big idea, general points, goals, ideas. This way their not thinking about the answer ahead of time. I, personally, like it when I see them thinking. I love the pauses and the looking up to think about the question a bit more. Plan ahead.

3. Encourage the person you’re interviewing to include the question in their answer. This will help facilitate during the editing process. this way, you don’t have to add the question in the final edit. for example, if you ask, what’s Your favorite part of the guitar? The interviewee should respond, “My favorite part of the guitar is……” The more comfortable the interviewee is with you, the more you can coach them, model for them the appropriate way.

4. Listen. Listen carefully to the answers. If something needs to be clarified, ask a clarifying question. The good thing about interviewing someone where you are genuinely curious, you will ask the right clarifying questions if needed. if they say something profound or something that triggers ideas, you can stop and make a note. Tell the person you’re talking with that you must write a note down because of something important they said. Don’t take too much time, however, just make a quick note to remind you right after the interview. Listening is a critical tool for all storytellers.

5. Invest in a good Microphone. There are many microphone adapters you can buy for your iPhone/mobile device. I like the Rode lav mic. You can quickly attach it to someone and use the associated app to record the interview. Sometimes audio only is enough. You can listen to it later, take notes of what was said, and go out and shoot or collect coverage (footage) to support the interview later. If you don’t have a mic, storytellers today are lucky today because the iPhone, iPad, and many android devices have great microphones. Just place it by the person you’re interviewing, and hit record. Make sure you use an app that allows you to see audio levels. There are a few options for you to record using a microphone and monitor the audio. I’ll have to add a link to this later.

6. Do your homework. Before interviewing someone, you should have an idea of what you need for that interview. Invest in a cool small notebook like a Moleskin or livescribe notebook. Review your notes prior to the interview. write down notes after the interview. Try to create a system of notetaking that others can understand if they look at it. This way, you can scan, take a picture of it with your iPhone, send it over to another producer, director, camera person, or editor for notes or instructions. For example, I have a common language and common symbols. I write things like coverage, I have letters like W (for wide), M (for medium), C (for close up). I use B (for B roll), I also use A (for A roll). I draw a lot in my notebooks.

Recently I learned from a teacher in North Carolina about the importance of passwords.

For many, this is a new reality. Now, one has to memorize multiple passwords. And if you work for a company or an organization that requires you to change it every three months, you understand how tough they could be to remember passwords.

However, it’s something we have to do we have to be smart about it, too. Recently, we have seen in the news about actors and athletes who have been “hacked”. As a technical person, they really were not hacked. They just allowed people to easily guess at their passwords. You see, they didn’t have very complicated passwordS. In fact, in another article, I read about how many athletes use their nickname, their mascot, and their number as their password. This isn’t hard for mischievous people with time on their hands.

Another disingenuous activity that happens online is when companies and people pose to be someone else requiring you to input your personal information. This, you should be very careful and aware of. It’s called “phishing”. This is when someone poses to be someone like Apple and ask you to update your credit card information and your password via a social link usually, not apple). You have to see if that email is for real. Stop. Take a closer look. Call them if you want to verify its legitimacy, too.

While at the school, teacher Stephanie Karst gave me a few cool tips on how to be more strategic and smarter about password choices..

Here is a video of our quick tip interview.

http://vimeo.com/109624777

These are really good tips. I am always amazed how many times I still see people with a sticky note with their username and password stuck to their computer. Or, a book on their desk called “passwords.” This is a new time. There’s way too much information online about you and leaving your keys out for everyone to find and use is not acting responsibly today.

Challenge: receiving your passwords. Think about how you can be more discrete and strategic. Also, think about how to retrieve it and store it in safe places.

If you take the time to think about your passwords a bit more– you’ll avoid a potential bad story.

M

Frederick J. Kelly of the University of Kansas designed a multiple-choice test in 1914 to help the military organize soldiers during WW1. After the first several tests of this process Dr. Kelly realized that this was not a good indicator up soldier talent, skill set, and contribution.

Let me make this clear. It’s not the technology that should stop you from creating a movie. there are many stops to make a movie and the technology is a tool used on some of those steps. For example, here is a brief outline of what a project can look like from start to finish. Most directors don’t know all of the pieces, however, they know what they want. Their goals are clear-ish and they trust they have a team that will figure it out.

The key is workflow.

If I want to make lasagna, I know I need the following items: lasagna noodles, minced meat, tomato sauce, spices, and cheese. I call this the “noun” part of the plan.

The second part of the process is what to do with those ingredients:

Boil the lasagna noodles, cook the minced meat, heat up the tomato sauce, add the spices, and finally layer the cheese as needed. Finally, we bake the assembled dish. This part of the plan I call the “verbs”.

Lastly, we talk about the tools. We boil The noodles using a stove and a big pot. We use a smaller pot to heat the tomato sauce. Will use a wider pan and a spoon to help cook the minced meat. We use a baking pan to assemble the lasagna components. At last, we use the oven to bake the lasagna dish. This part is the tools part.

And the sections, there are parts that we know and parts that we don’t know. To figure it out, we ask what do we know and what do we need to know.

This is how I produce my version of lasagna a.k.a., movies. I think about what those nouns are going to be, then I figure out the verbs I need to help me deal with the nouns, I then look at my resources or tools to see what I need or what questions I need to be asking. for some of this, I have knowledge as well as solutions, however, for other means, I may need to go online and find out, talk to someone, or connect with someone who can do it for me.

As a filmmaker, we don’t think about the tool first. We think about the story. The lasagna. If we thought about the tools first, it would prevent us from focusing on the most important part of this process. So, advice: start with your needs, goals, nouns, and then find your verbs and your tools.

I remember early lesson in a film class at a true filmmaker, storyteller knows how to figure things out. to this day, I use this as my motivation. If I don’t know something, what do I know, what do I need to know, and where can I go for help. this is my initial process.

For me, this is called learning. And, I love it.

Recently, I came across an blog post that a friend shared with me regarding using the iPad for digital storytelling

I still get asked a lot how can we use the iPad/tablet more in the classroom and I keep going back to digital storytelling as my obvious choice! It’s such a wonderful way for your students to personalize how they can report back their learnings and reflections. Instead of everyone JUST writing a paper, you now have options for students to showcase their assignmnets.

For example, some can make a song, others can make a newsletter, another group can write a blog post, other students can create a podcast, and maybe another group can create a documentary style report. The options are limitless now. As a group, you can create a rubric on what you want to see included in the project. What evidence do you want to see. You can still ask the students to display evidence of the learning goals you set out at the start.  Once the expectations and the possibilities are discussed, allow the students to search for a medium to collect, curate, cultivate, and create their projects.

See this list below for ideas that I copied from Sam Glicksman’s KQED blog post:

• Create a narrated slide-show story to demonstrate the understanding of new vocabulary.

• Use a video or screencast (a recording of interactions on a computer or iPad display) to explain a complex scientific concept.

• Create an audio or video interview of your grandparents for a family history project.

• Create a historical narrative of a pivotal event using images and audio.

• Create a first-person audio journal of a person who lived during a significant event in history.

• Explain a mathematical concept by creating a screencast tutorial.

• Use audio podcasting to practice reading and speaking in a foreign language.

• Demonstrate a portfolio of work with personal narrative describing each piece, its objectives, and development.

• Narrate a character story or a personal journal with a musical soundtrack.

Having options like these now, make the classroom experience so much more engaging for everyone. Finished projects don’t have to look the same anymore.  This way we can create a more personalized (or differentiated) experience.

Personally, as a social studies teacher, I have used digital storytelling as a way to connect my students with my learning goals. It provided me with many more options to create success in the classroom. I hope this list can inspire Instead of the students record your Theden consumed information, they produced information. This also helps grow their portfolios!  Its a WIN WIN WIN!!!