Cultural Expectations and Experiences
Participants/facilitators bring to the process of digital storytelling their cultural expectations of authority and ownership.
- Individual and collectivist approaches during production (and other cultural complexities)
- Student voice and identity (as both an individual and a representative of their family/culture)
- Being aware of issues in cross-cultural collaborations in story circles and peer review/feedback process
Imagined Audiences
Storytellers often imagine diverse audiences an anticipate responses to their stories involving diverse languages and cultures.
- Multiple audiences and diverse purposes & use of languages
- Participants as ambassadors for culture
- Participants as individuals moving between two cultures and in borderlands
- Cultural composition and readings of visual elements and soundscapes
Expectations of Power
Students’ and teachers’ educational expectations of curricular goals and student/teacher roles do not usually include sharing power.
- Who controls the elements of the content and the process? What should be learned and who should be teaching?
- Student-centeredness, creative production and the collaborative processes of storytelling in traditional classroom with various cultural expectations
- Assessing and evaluating DS work (evaluating completion of process but not always the product’s content, evaluating 7 elements, using audience response)
- How to structure in advance or decide in the moment when facilitators step in and drive
Stories Shown During Presentation
- ESOL Intercultural Communication Classes
- Somali Bantu Refugees’ Project Voice
- The Charlestown Project
- To view stories shown during the presentation, visit www.umbc.edu/stories