Many Faces One Voice

CCISD Stories, Educational Settings

2010-02-05T05:56:00.000-08:00

This week, I was at the Copper Country ISD to work with a SAIL staff member and students with disabilities from Calumet and Houghton High Schools. We finished six digital stories. All were wonderful! SAIL will be presenting at the Michigan Special Education Conference on their work with students in doing digital stories. I found the following resources on Digital Storytelling in Education:

The Center for Digital Storytelling offers the following:

The three-day Educator Workshop

is designed specifically for K-12 classroom teachers. Participants create shorter, first-person digital stories through the process outlined above and also have an opportunity to discuss useful tools and practical applications for introducing the methodology into a classroom setting.
The University of Colorado at Denver (CU), in conjunction with the Center, is offering a Digital Storytelling Certificate Program

-- a series of three CU-transcripted, graduate-level courses in which participants develop the skills necessary to produce digital stories as well as facilitate their use across a wide range of educational and work settings. The Certificate Program consists of our three-day Standard or Educator workshop, a ten-week online course, a five-day Facilitator Intensive Training workshop, and a one-credit, self-paced implementation course. (I've done the 3 day and 5 day training so far, not sure I want the certificate but the online course might be interesting if I can find the $$!)

Here's some links to resources for DST in Education.

Integrating Digital Storytelling in your Classroom
How to Use Digital Storytelling in Your Classroom
Art, Storytelling, Technology and Education Resources for educators, parents, innovators
Digital Quill

DST resources for educators
Digital Storytelling Forum

There are so many links and pages! Just do a Google Search! "Digital Storytelling in the classroom". Or "Digital Storytelling Education".

What's happening

2010-01-29T07:16:00.000-08:00

I've been posting to the email list as interesting items come to my attention but haven't developed the habits yet to keep this blog updated. So here's a list of some of the resources and news over the past few months:

A new video has been posted on our MDRC Our Voices You Tube Channel, a story by James Ivy called Listen to My Dream.
I am traveling to Calumet MI next week to help out storytellers at Superior Alliance for Independent Living (SAIL). They are working with a group of students who have disabilities who are transitioning from school to life and will be doing a day of storytelling.
I was able to show some stories to a few people at a Peer Mentoring Training in Lansing last week for people in the community mental health system who have developmental disabilities.

Various Resources and News:

Thanks Norm for finding this article about storytelling! It covers some of the elements we talk about in our classes in a bit more depth.
We passed on this message to our email list:
"Hello, this is a message from a new admin of Autistics Against Autism Speaks! First, thank you to all members who have started following the new Twitter account, after about two weeks we have almost a hundred followers! If you haven't done so already, you can follow us here: www.twitter.com/au1smspeaks". Now, I need to ask for the help of every one of you, for a very special new video we're doing for the YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/autismspeaksv1ds. The idea was thought of by @psychomia from Twitter, so thank you! Here's the plan: we want to make a video promoting the fact that autistic people and parents of autistic children are proud of their autism and, more importantly, that people on the autistic spectrum are equal to everyone else and are human beings just as much as neurotypical people. We want volunteers - whether they're so-called "low-functioning", "high-functioning", Asperger's or parents of children on the spectrum - to film themselves talk about these things and send the videos to us via e-mail at autismspeaks123@googlemail.com. Obviously, to do this you will need to be happy with having your face on the internet, but that's it! You can film it on a webcam, a phone, a camcorder, iPod, or anything really! Just e-mail the videos to us at autismspeaks123@googlemail.com and we'll put it in the video. Thank you for reading, and a massive thank you in advance if you help out!"
Free online resources to do a story map for your digital story:
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/storymap/index.html.
Wouldn't if be great to have some students with disabilities enter this annual contest? C-SPAN's StudentCam is an annual national video documentary competition that encourages students to think seriously about issues that affect our communities and our nation. Students are asked to create a short (5-8 minute) video documentary that responds to one of the topics listed below. To view the full list of competition rules and requirements.
ORTH HOLLYWOOD, CA, and MCLEAN, VA -- The Foundation of American
Women in Radio & Television and The Academy of Television Arts &
Sciences Foundation proudly announce a partnership with The Loreen
Arbus Foundation that will focus on the needs, achievements,
contributions and stories of citizens with disabilities to commemorate
the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2010.
The partnership creates The Loreen Arbus Focus on Disability
Scholarship to be given to aspiring student television and filmmakers.
The announcement was jointly issued by Sylvia Strobel, Interim
President of American Women in Radio & Television, Terri Clark,
Executive Director of the Television Academy Foundation, and Loreen
Arbus. Both scholarships will be presented at the April 10, 2010
College Television Awards, the Television Academy Foundation’s annual
celebration of the best in student television, digital and film work
in the U.S.

AWRT’s competition will challenge students to create a 60 second
Public Service Announcement (PSA) that tells the compelling story of
disability in America, the societal changes effected by the Americans
with Disabilities Act that have enabled them to become more
independent and self-sufficient, and the remarkable contributions
Americans with disabilities have made. The PSA will be prominently
displayed on AWRT’s web site and social media outlets and will be
showcased during the Television Academy Foundation’s College
Television Awards this coming April, and at the July 2010 National
Summit on Disability Policy Conference in Washington, D.C.

On behalf of the Television Academy Foundation, one of the
scholarships will recognize a young talent whose work sheds light on
people with disabilities, helps emerging artists gain recognition and
increases visibility for artists with disabilities. The scholarship
will be presented to student writers, producers or directors with
disabilities, producers of content focused on people with
disabilities, or to a piece that features one or more actors with
disabilities.

Holding the distinction of serving as the first woman in the U.S. to
head programming for two cable networks, Showtime and Cable Health
Network/Lifetime, Loreen Arbus is a disability rights activist
committed to her work with United Cerebral Palsy (UCP), the
organization founded by her parents, Isabelle and Leonard H.
Goldenson, Founder/Chairman, ABC. The fifth-largest U.S. health
agency, UCP serves and advocates on behalf of more than 54 million
Americans with disabilities.

Contacts:
Television Academy Foundation: American Women in Radio & Television:
Pam Golum/Michael Samonte Amy Lotz
The Lippin Group/LA alotz@awrt.org
msamonte@lippingroup.com (703) 506-3290
(323) 965-1990
A found a new story about a disability experience posted on Stories for Change - FYI: Out of Darkness
I thought you may like this collection of stories at Ohio State. http://digitalstory.osu.edu/stories.html
In early November, the IML hosted a group of 4-year-old preschool students, who learned about video cameras, story structure and basic editing in a revised version of our Digital Storytelling and Recombinant Narrative Workshop. The students responded exceptionally well, using their love of stories as a foundation for thinking through screen-based narrative. http://vimeo.com/7926691.
Captioning Resource: Captioning YouTube Video and Providing Accessible Controls.

That's it for now! Thanks for sharing.

Some captioning resources

2009-09-09T10:50:00.000-07:00

I am attending a Target center webinar on captioning today. It will be recorded if you want to see it later. Here are some resources:

Caption Tube: http://captiontube.appspot.com/ It's a free online resource for captions. Will connect to your videos on You Tube if you have a Google account.

This great website/organization http://www.dcmp.org/

They have a wealth of resources on captioning. You can download a PDF of the captioning Key FYI. http://www.dcmp.org/captioningkey/index.html It's also on the web page.

The site also has information about audio description. http://www.descriptionkey.org/

2009-09-02T09:51:00.001-07:00

Today I received a call from Elicia at the Superior Alliance for Independent Living in Marquette. She's helping someone make a digital story who wants to show it to the Commission for Blind. They'll need to add audio descriptions to make the video accessible. We talked about adding a voice track with the descriptions in Audacity to the main narration and music tracks. Then export the project with the 3 tracks as a .wav to import into PhotoStory, which only allows one sound file to be imported. They'll need to do two versions of the video, one with and one without audio description. I suggested they use a different person's voice than the narrator for the description. They'll also need to be sure there are enough pauses in the main narration to insert the descriptions.

I sent her some resources on descriptive video I found on the web:

Audio Description (AD) is the descriptive narration of key visual elements of live theatre, television, movies, and other media to enhance their enjoyment by consumers who are blind or have low vision. AD is the insertion of audio explanations and descriptions of the settings, characters, and action taking place in such media, when such information about these visual elements is not offered in the regular audio presentation. http://www.adinternational.org/

Guidelines for Audio Description:
http://www.adinternational.org/guidelines.html

Samples:
http://www.adinternational.org/samples.html

I've been wanting to add audio description for sometime. While I've done some research to learn about them, I just haven't had or made the time to do it. Ideally I'd like to have a player on our web page that would play both open and closed captions and open or closed audio descriptions. Though I found a player that should do this, I just don't have the technical knowledge and skills needed to include it on our web page. I hope to find someone who can help me with this! (If you know a resource, please let me know!)

Long Time, addition

2009-08-20T09:11:00.001-07:00

Also:

One more thing I forgot to add! I presented about the Many Faces One Voice project in June at the 1st Annual Peer Specialist Conference "Recovery Hope & Healing: Living Longer - Living Stronger." The presentation was very well received. As part of this, I developed a resource list which added some links about Storytelling and Recovery:

“I think that my recovery began the moment I dared look back on my life. Until then, there had been only one official story. An essential part of recovery is to look back at what has happened to you and to make your own story about it. In fact, you rewrite your history such that it suits you. You claim right of ownership over your own experiences. What is important is that you and no one else, give meaning to what has happened.” -http://akmhcweb.org/recovery/LifeAfterPsychiatry.htm\

"…everyone has a victim narrative, and you need to tell it and know you’ve been heard before you can move on to becoming a survivor or hero. Victim narratives are not helpful if you never move on from narrating them; if you remain permanently stuck in the victim’s role.”-From the blog A Storied Career http://tinyurl.com/storycareer

Northern CMH Photobiography Project – DVD: To See What I See: The Stigma of Mental Illness http://tinyurl.com/toseewhatIsee

Confessions of a non-compliant patient - By Judi Chamberlin http://www.power2u.org/articles/recovery/confessions.html

Recovery Stories from the National Empowerment Center: http://tinyurl.com/power2ustories

The Potential Role of Life-Writing Therapy in Facilitating ‘Recovery’ for Those with Mental Illness -http://tinyurl.com/n2ve8c

Nonprofit storytelling—beware of impact stories that don’t link to public policy - http://tinyurl.com/nonprofitstorytelling

Long Time!

2009-08-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

I realize good intentions aside, this is the first update in a quite a while! Not too much going on but the project is still happening, slower without the grant funding. Here's just a quick summary of recent activity:

Melinda Haus Johnson, Theresa Squires, Laura Hall and I presented at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit this July. The title was "Our Pride, Your Pity" and was about changing how people with disabilities are portrayed the media. Both Melinda and Laura showed their stories as part of this presentation.
I started a class at Community Connections in Benton Harbor this summer. It looks like we'll be finishing at least 3 stories over the next few weeks.
We've been providing some consultation and technical assistance to staff at SAIL in Marquette as part of their mini grant from the Michigan Developmental Disabilities Council to the Alger Marquette RICC. I am returning in the next month or so to help them get videos posted on the web and talk about ways to help people use their videos in advocacy efforts.
We had some discussions with a group in the Traverse City area about helping with a class for people to tell stories about recovery from mental illness but the funding was a barrier here (so far).

So a quick update, hope to get more videos posted soon!

Digital Story Telling Update!

2009-02-22T06:00:00.000-08:00

Though the funding from the AT&T Excelerator Program ended, the Many Faces, One Voice Project continues! We are looking forward to new stories:

The people I worked with at the Superior Alliance for Independent Living (SAIL) in Marquette are now teaching 24 school students who have disabilities to tell their stories.
Norm Delisle showed some stories at the Recovery Council. As a result, we are talking with a group in Northern Lower Michigan about holding a class this spring.
SAIL received a mini grant from the Developmental Disabilities Council to work with members of the Alger/Marquette RICC to create digital stories. They are working with the group now and we'll start classes in April.
As a result of attending our presentation at the Michigan Rehabilitation Conference, a RICC in Bay county is planning to create digital stories to use in their advocacy efforts.

We continue to increase our skills and build our capacity to do this work.

We are exploring the use of netbooks to create stories. The cost is comparatively low and since we use free and web-based software, these mini laptops might be able to handle the work.
We've found a flash video player that can play open and closed descriptive video, but this isn't available on You Tube or other sites. We continue to look for ways to add descriptive video to the stories. We need technical support to add the player to our website while we advocate with others to increase accessibility.

Check back! There's been a surge of new interest in the project and we'll keep you posted!

DD Council is holding public forums

2009-02-17T11:04:00.001-08:00

UCP Michigan and MDRC are hosting public forums for the Michigan Developmental Disabilities Council. The forums are to find out what people with developmental disabilities and family members believe is most important.

The Council spends roughly $1.8 million every year on grants for capacity building, systems change, and advocacy programming. The forums will help the Council decide how to spend the $9 million in its next 5-year plan.

At these forums, instead of 1 person at a time speaking from a podium, people sit Café style at round tables.

The forums will be held in 6 locations around the state. They are:
Flint – February 24, 2009
Southeast Michigan – March 19, 2009
Plainwell – April 28, 2009
Midland – May 5, 2009
Gaylord – May 20, 2009
Marquette – June 11, 2009

For times and locations, or to register, go to:
http://www.copower.org/ohreg/index.php

Questions? Contact Glenn Ashley
Program Coordinator, "Our Hopes for the Future”
United Cerebral Palsy of Michigan
phone: 517 203-1200
Ashley @ ucpmichigan.org

New Video Posted!

2008-09-16T09:23:00.000-07:00

We've finished more stories! Tia Van's story "The Birthmark" is now up on our website! More will be posted soon.

The storytellers would love to hear from you. Please go to their Google video pages and leave your comments. (The title of the video is linked to the Google video page.)

Featured Storyteller: "Proud and Powerful"

2008-09-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

Interview with Storyteller: Melinda Haus Johnson

Why did you tell this story?

Disability pride is a concept that is new to a lot of people. I thought that hearing a personal story relating to disability pride might help others see that it really isn't some far-fetched idea. Rather it is something that all of us with disabilities can have and need to have to truly feel liberated as individuals and as community.

What do you want people to learn or question after seeing your story?

Disability pride is unique to each individual. There is no right or wrong form of pride or way to express it. I want people to think about their perceptions of disability and really question what disability pride might mean for them and how their life might change if they had disability pride.

How will or have you used this story for advocacy?

I have used it with presentations and it always sparks great discussions. It is much more of an educational tool to help break down attitudinal barriers that people with disabilities face. Every time I have use it, a different quote or picture seems to stick with each person that watches it - and I hope years down the road they can say, "I remember that story...."

Tell us a little about the experience of creating a digital story. (Would you do it again?, was it worth it?)

Yes, Yes, Yes it was worth it and Yes, Yes, Yes I would do it again. It is like taking a trip down memory lane as you sort through pictures to use and soak up all emotions that come with them. It also gets your creative juices going learning all the editing techniques and playing around with different music and sound effects.

You Tube Adds Closed Captions!

2008-08-28T19:33:00.000-07:00

I learned today from someone on the COAT Coalition mailing list about this feature! See an article about closed captions on You Tube!

I've been on MDRC's You Tube Channel tonight adding captions to the videos we've uploaded. We had the caption files already done, of course, as Google Video has had this feature for a while. I did hear from one person that when you embed the You Tube videos though, the captions don't work. I also noticed that the caption ability/toggle is cleverly hidden in the lower right hand corner of the player with an arrow pointing up. When you select the arrow, you are given the option to turn on captions.

Through the process of reading about this new development, I also found a resource new to me- a pdf file: "Providing Captions for Flash-Based Streaming Video"

Progress is good! And we were ready to respond. Let us know what you think of our captions on You Tube!

New Story Posted!

2008-08-28T09:06:00.000-07:00

The first story from our class at the Superior Alliance for Independent Living (SAIL) has been posted on our Many Faces One Voice web site.

Featured Storyteller!

2008-08-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

"Will You Choose to Make A Difference?"

Interview with Daniel Burke, Storyteller

Why did you tell this story?

I decided to tell this story because I felt that it had two very important messages, first about overcoming disability to be able to make a difference and secondly the importance of public transportation.

What do you want people to learn or question after seeing your story?

I would like people to come away with the understanding that just because an individual is disabled, it does not limit the impact of the contribution that they can make in their lives and the lives of others.

How will or have you used this story for advocacy?

I have used this video to advocate for public transportation showing it to city and township officials, as well as transportation agencies in order to gain support for public transportation.This video was also shown to a group of individuals in the Arc Shiawassee's summer program to inspire them to get involved and make a difference.

Tell us a little about the experience of creating a digital story. (Would you do it again?, was it worth it?)

The experience of creating a digital story was a little intimidating, considering the limited computer skills that I came into this project with. I have chosen to do it again, I am currently working on a second video as part of a project that is taking place here in Shiawassee County. As frustrating as the whole process is, when I see what the first idea turned out like, I say it was very much worth it.

Free Technology Toolkit for UDL in All Classrooms

2008-08-09T04:01:00.001-07:00

A very large number of tools, including stuff for digital story telling. More than you might htink.

Michigan Disability Rights Coalition Board meeting

2008-07-15T08:20:00.001-07:00

The next meeting of the MDRC governing board is July 24, 2008 from 4 pm to 6 pm. The meeting will be held at the MDRC office at 3498 East Lake Lansing Rd., Suite 100, East Lansing, Michigan 48823. Interested parties may attend. Please let us know you are coming by calling 1-800-760-4600.

Featured Story!

2008-07-11T12:17:00.000-07:00

Becoming Proud and Powerful

Interview with Alicia Rouse, Storyteller

Why did you decide to tell this story?

I decided to tell this story because I finally felt comfortable stating out loud that I have a disability and I am proud. I felt comfortable enough because of the welcoming that I have received from the disability community.

What do you want people to learn or question after seeing your story?

I want people to stop perceiving PWD’s as broken, weird, scary, etc., I felt ashamed for a long time that I had a disability and I never should have felt bad about myself. But it is b/c society views having a disability as being a bad thing. Why would that be? Is it bad to have red hair? No it is just different than the norm. People with disabilities are not special, or god’s children, we are just human beings. Don’t pity people with disabilities!!

How will or have you used this story for advocacy?

I am not sure how I am going to use this story, I know Glenn talked about having the DD Council see it, maybe if I get up enough courage I will share it with staff [at her workplace]. I need to brainstorm how and in what environment it would be appropriate.

Tell us a little about the experience of creating a digital story. (Would you do it again? Was it worth it?)

I really enjoyed the experience of creating my story. I wish there had been more one on one time, or half day workshops because it was left up to us to do things on our own time and that was difficult to manage with schedules already being full. I would love to do another story about transportation or current discrimination against PWD’s or something along civil rights, and show it to legislators and representatives at the capitol. I think that would make a huge impact on them if they could actually see what PWD’s have to face in a supposed inclusive society. It was totally worth it!!! it gave me the courage to own up to having a disability and be proud about who I am.

Stories available!

2008-07-11T09:06:00.000-07:00

We finished the class and have moved on to new groups! Finished videos can be viewed at the Many Faces, One Voice web site Some people are still struggling with uploading their captions. This should be resolved within the next weeks. We'll be featuring a story on this blog periodically, more often as we have more stories to share of course!

During the Summer of 2008, we'll build on UCP of Michigan's "Life in Focus" project in working with The Shiawassee Transportation Advocacy Coalition in Owosso, MI. We will also hold a class for staff members at the Superior Alliance for Independent Living (SAIL), a Center for Independent Living in Marquette, MI.

Some things I've learned after the first session in Marquette is to remember to bring tissue, as we look at stories to learn about the 7 elements of a digital story. Also, I am so strongly reminded of why the hard work in doing this is worth it. The stories I heard are so incredibly powerful. Once again, I can hardly wait to show them to you!

We need to find additional funding to continue our efforts. We are working with SAIL in Marquette on a mini grant application and hope to offer a class there over the next year. The Disability Network/Michigan is interested in working with us to find funding to develop a "train the trainer" for Center for Independent Living staff. Let us know if you have ideas for us!

Our Last Session is Planned

2008-06-05T07:05:00.000-07:00

Our last class is being held in two sessions, June 6 and June 11. We had to add a session. Though we had 4 hours scheduled for the last session, several people needed more time to complete videos. We did watch the final drafts (as of the end of the session). Powerful stuff!!

We added a class because the 4 hours wasn't enough time to get people through the captioning. One problem was the need to upload the video to Google video. It can take up to a day for the video to be available we found out, so even if we did this first thing in the session, we still couldn't do captions using the on-line overstream.net.

We've asked participants to have their videos uploaded to Google and to sign up for accounts on Overstream prior to the last class. We showed a short tutorial video (with screen shots, using Camtasia) on how to upload the videos at the last class.

We do still have a barrier with Google, to get an account, people have to go through a captcha. Even with an audio alternative, this still presents problems. The audio is so garbled, it's nearly impossible to get, especially if you have any type of audio processing issue. Many people have both visual and audio processing issues. We'll need to provide assistance for now.

We passed out a release form at the last session and everyone signed it. Some with restrictions (like notifying them first). We based the form on one we downloaded from Stories for Change (check the resource section).

Both Glenn and I have met individually with some people in between. Some will not completely be done even with the last class but we anticipate most will. Can't wait to link to their videos!

I made a video tutorial (using Camtasia) but the audio was so bad. It sounds like I am in a cave on Mars with dripping water! I don't have time now to redo this. I don't know what the problem was, spent hours checking audio settings. I know I had just downloaded and installed Skype. Suspect that had something to do with this, but even after removing the program, the problem persisted. We'll try to use this anyway but I hope to redo them soon.

Stay tuned! The video stories will blow you away. I am so impressed with the talent in this group!

Our first class

2008-05-13T07:20:00.000-07:00

Update

We've been holding our first class. Participants include staff from our organizations and some brave volunteers from other organizations. We have 10 people participating. 8 are people with disabilities.

Schedule

We scheduled 4 classes April - May. The first and the 4th for 4 hours, the others for 2. Here's the schedule we started the class with:

Before Class:

Prepare draft script.

We sent out a long instruction email and asked people to read the Digital Story Cookbook (at least the 7 elements) before class. For other groups, we may need to add an hour or two session for this introduction prior to people being able to draft a script.

We also met individually with everyone to load the free software on their machines. This gave us a chance to talk about the project, answer questions and check in on how their draft scripts were progressing.

Day One (4 hours)

Review the 7 elements of digital storytelling
Story Circle
Work on Scripts

Before Day Two:

Finish script!
Make appointments for Audio Script with Kathryn or Glenn

Day Two: 2 Hours (April 21 12:30 – 2:30)

Overview on using and finding photos and music
Photo Editing Tutorial using Picasa
Work on editing photos
Work on finding music

Before Day Three:

Finalize music selections
Finalize images

Day Three: 2.5 Hours (April 24 10 – 2:00)

Work on Photo Story Videos

Before Day Four

Prepare script for captioning.

Day Four: 4 Hours (May 14 12:30 – 4:30)

Captioning Tutorial Overstream.com
Next Steps

Location and equipment

We found a free location at the Michigan Commission on Disability Concerns offices. The room was great with outlets in the middle of the floor and tables we could rearrange easily. They had wireless internet available too! The room didn't have window so it did get stuffy. We had to close the door as office cubicles were located just outside.

We brought our laptops and a projector. On day two, we each brought a scanner. In hindsight, we think we need to have people who want to scan photos come early, as this took a lot of our time and others in the class also needed some help and encouragement. We also had a digital camera available, though no one needed this.

One person borrowed a laptop from UCP Michigan. Everyone else had laptops they could use. Everyone had wireless. We did have one computer station with Internet available, but no one needed to use it.

Use of Free Software

We decided to use the following free software: Photo Story 3, Picasa, and Audacity. For captions, we didn't know at the start what we'd be using. See below for more information.

Narration and Individual Help

We are doing the narration/voice recording individually. Some people are recording their voice directly into photo story, others are using audacity. If they used audacity, they had to mix their music, sounds and voice into one file to import into photo story. Since this is a bit more complicated, mostly the people who are more technically confident are using this method. I found a video tutorial on how to do this and gave people a copy.

We need more microphones though. People wanted to be able to edit after the individual sessions. I found some at home we'd gotten over the years to use with a voice input program. They had headphones and a microphone attached and were optimized for voice recording. I've given all of these out to class members now. I'd like to be able to buy some for the organization to have for this project.

As we've met with people individually for the voice recordings, we've been providing help on other aspects of their stories too. The time in class is shorter than the 3 days we had with the Center for Digital Storytelling so there isn't much time in group for individual assistance.

Captions

We've now decided to use overstream.net and Google Video. Google video has a button to toggle for captions. But you have to upload a caption file. In overstream, the recently added a feature that allows you to export your caption file. So people can take this extra step or just point people to oversteam.net to view the captions.

The advantage of saving the caption file to your computer is being able to show the video with captions from your computer instead of having to connect to the web. I still have to learn how to do this, but know it's possible. For now, people may just have to access the web to show their videos with captions.

We may explore the Magpie/subtitle workshop route in the future.

Modifications to the schedule.

We realized late into this process that the last day's schedule was way too much and we probably need to schedule another day. I'll post soon how this went. I've polled the class and many want more time. Glenn and I are both so busy with our other work, as are the people in class, so scheduling will be difficult. We hope to view near done or finished prior to captions video stories in tomorrows class.

I have some work to do to get ready!

Till next time,

Downloading Mediasite Streams

2008-04-14T03:16:00.001-07:00

I had to download a Mediasite stream, and got an application called WM Recorder that downloads the file from the stream, not from the desktop. It produces a very high quality video, though it takes a while (since the stream is intermittent because of the way buffering works).

The file is a .dat file that I converted to avi-obviously could have converted to other formats.

Captioning videos with overstream.

2008-04-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

I found it fairly easy to add captions to my video using Overstream.com, although it was a bit tedious trying to get the captions to start and end when I wanted them to. I was able to cut and paste the text from a document.

You can see a couple sample videos with captions at http://seventygra.googlepages.com

Making Video Accessible

2008-03-17T10:14:00.000-07:00

Not only do we want to tell compelling stories, we want the stories to be accessible. To start, we've been looking at two things: captioning for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing (or have the volume turned down, don't have speakers and so on) and audio description for people who are Blind.

We want to make this easy for people to do with free or cheap software, but haven't found a great way to do either as yet.

You Tube isn't accessible for either, unless you add captions as subtitles and they become part of the video. Google Video has a closed caption feature. I found a service called Overstream.net and used this to add captions to my first digital story.

It took me a while to figure out how to both create captions then add them to Google. Here's what I did:

I downloaded the free Magpie and used this to add captions.
Then I saved the captions as plain text.
I opened the plain text file and deleted everything that wasn't caption text or start and stop times.
I downloaded the free subtitle workshop and imported the captions text file.
Then I saved it in "subrip" format.
I uploaded the video to Google Video.
Then I used their web features to upload the subrip caption file. Instructions for adding captions to Google video .

None of this was easy, though it was cheap (free software).

Apparently, if you download even more software, you can use the subtitle workshop to burn the captions as part of the video, instead of a separate file. I haven't tried this but Jared has and he described how it worked.

I also uploaded a video using Overstream.net. My first digital story is there with captions. A learning curve here too. I heard about this on a blog by Proud Geek, who gives great instructions based on his own efforts to do captions. I just now found he has a post on how to use Overstream to add captions to Google Video! (Post on Sept 17, 2007).

No one seems to have an audio description feature. Of course you could try to add audio when making the video but we are using free/low cost software so this isn't possible, or at least we haven't figured out how to do it as yet. I want to try to do this using Magpie though.

So much to learn!

Welcome!

2008-03-14T05:25:00.000-07:00

The first part of the Many Faces One Voice project is to educate ourselves about storytelling and the the use of technology for storytelling.

We attended a 3 day workshop in January 2008 to learn to put together digital stories. In February 2008, we'll attend a 5 day "Train the Trainer". Both the workshop and the train the trainer are from the Center for Digital Storytelling.

We'll use this information and research into affordable and accessible tools to develop a curriculum. We plan to present this to a pilot group of Michigan Disability Rights Coalition and UCP Michigan staff members in April and May 2008.

The next step is to teach people with disabilities how to tell their stories in a compelling and accessible manner using the web. We'll focus on those who are working with advocacy groups on issues of importance to Michigan's Disability Community.

We've explored some tools for captioning to make videos accessible to people who are Deaf and hard of hearing. We need to learn about descriptive video for people who are blind or low vision. This blog has been created to share our journey.