How do you grab the attention of 120 middle school-aged students? The answer at Aki Kurose Middle School auditorium last month was not MTV or a movie star but rather student-made documentaries from the Dharamsala, India, Ollantaytambo, Peru, and Alaska's Arctic Village.
Local students from Hamilton Middle School, The Evergreen School and Aki Kurose Middle School watched with rapt attention as stories of Tibetan girls playing soccer, Peruvian girls selling handmade dolls, and boys fishing in the frigid Arctic were told in the teenagers' own words.
The documentaries were made with the help of a Seattle-based nonprofit organization called "Bridges to Understanding," which connects youth worldwide through digital storytelling. You can view student work on www. bridgesweb.org.
Last Tuesday students from three of the five local schools participating in the Bridges program came together for the first time to participate in a "Digital Storytelling Workshop."
As the 120 students initially filled the auditorium, Ms. Sharon Greenberg, from Hamilton Middle School, helped the students see their common bonds by asking them to stand if they speak more than one language, have friends from different cultures and have pets (among other questions).
Languages spoken by Bridges students include Vietnamese, Spanish, Chinese, Cambodian, Japanese, Thai, French, German, Phillipino, Hebrew, Italian, Sweedish, Laos, Arabic and North African languages.
After this and other introductory remarks, they watched the documentaries. Marty Kelly Peterson, from the Evergreen School, asked students to pay attention to the technical elements of the stories as well as their content.
"It is really interesting to hear about people from other countries," said Loretta Aho, a Hamilton Middle School student. "I liked the football (soccer) movie the best. In other countries women aren't allowed to do things, but they found a way to do it."
Ash Harris, ofThe Evergreen School, liked the way the movies use digital technology to make still pictures show motion.
After discussing the video as a group, the students broke up into small groups and participated in three workshops: letter writing, digital portrait taking and storyboarding. The students wrote letters to Bridges students around the world explaining their favorite game.
In the digital portrait-taking workshop, local mentors showed students how to take photographs of each other. Tim Grey from Microsoft used computers to print their pictures on the spot.
Students then learned how to organize pictures into a coherent outline, or "storyboard," for a story. They took pictures from local magazines and figuried out how to order the pictures and write a coherent narrative. This is an essential element of organizing the documentaries students make through Bridges.
Typically, mentors from Bridges (often professional photographers) teach groups of middle school students through weekly classroom visits. After taking pictures from their lives and putting them together into a logical narrative, the workshop participants present the finished product to their peers globaly via an interactive online forum.
Marshal Copeland and Philip Rudio, both of Aki Kurose Middle School, agreed that "talking to people on the internet" from around the world is their favorite part of the program.
On the forum, students engage each other and ask questions about each other's cultures as well as the techniques used in their finished products.
Photographer and human rights advocate Phil Borges founded Bridges in 2000.
"What would happen if young people were able to meet on a platform that allowed an equal exchange?" he asked. "What if they could learn with and from each other, not just about each other?"
He created Bridges with that vision in mind, and the success of his vision was evident in the children's enthusiasm on Tuesday. Some students showed this energy through noisy discussions about framing portraits or quietly pondered the significance of what they had seen.
Aaron Cohen, of the Evergreen School, was surprised b y seeing how people fished in Alaska. He didn't know they used chain saws to cut through ice in such remote areas.
"Where do they get electricity?" Cohen asked. "How do they charge their saws? How do they charge their cameras?"
Elaine Flacker from Hamilton Middle School said that watching the video about girls making and selling dolls in Peru to support their families made her think about how she can help her family.
Ash Harris from the Evergreen school felt "sad for the children who have to sell for a living." He said he felt his lifestyle was almost the "exact opposite."
"It was really exciting to have a physical manifestation of what we have been trying to do with Bridges and to see all the students work together in a creative way," said Susan Olivier Hirasawa, executive director of Bridges, after the children left. "I was very moved."[[In-content Ad]]
