digital media education
13
Jun

Kelly Adams, 2012 Fellow Introduction

Namaste,

My name is Kelly Adams and I am one of the 2012 teaching fellows with the Modern Story.  I rest tonight at the home where I grew up in Lebanon, Pennsylvania- in a state of, at once, reflection and anxious anticipation for the journey of challenges and triumphs that await upon my arrival in Hyderabad in the coming days. I would like to take this time to introduce myself.

I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to work on behalf of the Modern Story, and towards the mission of integrating technology and narrative in the classroom and encouraging students to engage with their personal, social, and natural environment in a proactive way. I hope to facilitate experiential learning through the Modern Story curriculum and production of film projects that will extend from language development, technological confidence, and career planning to personal empowerment, cross-cultural education, and creative discipline. I am also excited to develop along my own course of digital storytelling in this unique opportunity to bring awareness to the lives of urban, Indian youth on a global scale, through the voices, images, and productions of those concerned.

I come from a background in Anthropology and Environmental Earth Science, and align my academic focus to the junction of these two disciplines, where the nature of human experience meets the human experience of nature. My senior thesis in Anthropology concerned Native American sacred lands, and the reality of religious freedom and self-determination for the Native American population of the United States. Writing this paper was as much a process of self-discovery as it was an academic project, and I was left with a new respect for the true beauty in diversity of ways of being, seeing, relating, understanding, and defining human life that co-inhabit the cultural sphere, and with a determination to serve the sustenance of cultural and ecological diversity on planet Earth.

I am a firm believer in the power of the film medium as a tool to enhance recognition, promote self-determination, and serve the empowerment of disconnected and disenfranchised people, communities, and cultures of the globe. This will not be my first experience in India – in fact, I have only recently returned to American soil after an 11-month trip abroad that began June, 2011.  I spent 7 months living and working in Pune, Maharasthra on behalf of a new media online documentary film festival, whose mission is to raise awareness and evolve human consciousness towards a more integrated and holistic paradigm. Upon completing my obligations with this festival, I took an extended layover in Cappadocia, Turkey where I had my first practice run at the creative construction of my own documentary project, which I entitled ‘Landscape Biography: Cappadocia” – something that I would like to pursue further in my future studies.

I am so excited to return to India, and feel that I would need to be a poet to communicate the emotion that this country awoke in me. Although I was initially disoriented in this country, by the overwhelming colors, sounds, smells, and tastes, there is a spirit that infests its air that has profoundly touched me.  In the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘India is a bundle of contradictions, held together by strong but invisible threads,’ and it is a powerful place to confront the true unity in diversity of life on this planet. I have grown so much from my experience in India, and am excited for the chance to give back-  hands on, on the ground, and immersed in this culture daily.  If there is one thing I have learned in India, it is the extent of education that occurs outside of the classroom  – with this in my heart, I am grateful for the opportunity to enter the classroom and have a holistic, reciprocal, learning experience between fellows and students.

 

I am also excited to share this experience with all of you in the Modern Story community! We will be sure to keep you updated on the activities and projects of the students!

 

Until next time,

Kelly Adams


Final Videos from Communities Rising Workshops

Arriving back from Pongal break last week, Ilana and I jumped into a long task list in our final push to complete projects and classes. We took the Railway girls on a field trip to the Google office in Hi-Tec City and had our last class and celebration with the boy at APRS. The students at Railway and Sultan Bazaar have been working hard to finalize their videos, and we’ll have screenings and celebrations with them tomorrow and Monday.

Before all the Hyderabad hubbub, though, I completed TMS workshops at Communities Rising in Tamil Nadu, and also had a final screening and celebration there. I am proud of the projects the students created in such a short time frame, so this morning I’m taking a few minutes to share them here.

At Communities Rising I worked with three different sets of students. The first video was envisioned and produced by Siva, a participant in the staff workshop I conducted. Siva is a computer teacher at CR’s after-school program in Periathachoor village. The video addresses the issues of fear and corporal punishment in schools and will be used by CR as a tool for promoting positive disciplinary tactics. Siva made both an English and Tamil version of his project.

Fear (Bayam) from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

As Ilana and I have experienced in our other classes, having a committed local teacher involved with TMS activities exponentially improves our effectiveness as digital storytelling instructors, both because of translation and the ability for the youth involved to continue learning when our program ends. After his own training, Siva played a crucial role assisting me as I taught photography, video, and editing skills to two groups of children in the Periathachoor after-school program. All of the equipment and software we used belongs to CR, and I know that Siva will continue guiding his young students through creative video projects in the coming months.

In the two projects below I created lesson plans that focused on practicing English skills while learning digital technology. My goal was to provide a model for meeting two of CR’s educational objectives–they emphasize literacy, math, English and computer skills–in an engaging way.

The following video shows two of five emotion dramas performed and filmed by 6th through 8th class students.

Emotions from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

The next video focuses on the English alphabet. Fourth and fifth class students explored letters visually with the cameras and verbally by reading on film.

ABC Movie from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Communities Rising’s college volunteers created the final three videos, in which they discuss their life experiences and perspectives on CR’s role in education for youth in rural India.

Fire at Communities Rising from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

An Engineer from a Village from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Education at Communities Rising from The Modern Story on Vimeo.