Students Share Their Work Across Continents

October 2, 2012

Thanks to technology, students can produce videos to share with other youth globally, and view and comment on videos produced by youth in sites far away.

For example, today, youth view a video called “A day at the park.” It was created with flip cameras, Mac laptops and IMovie. They post their questions to the creators:

Is that a lake or a swimming pool?
Do you eat those birds?
Is the park owned by your school?
Why are those birds living near the water?

Then the conversation broadens:
Does your school administration care about maintaining your hair short?
Does your school have boarders and day schoolers?

They learn more about each other in ensuing discussions. What makes this conversation unique is that the students who created and posted the video live in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. The students posting the questions live in Rwentutu, Uganda.

In turn, the Ugandan students post a video focusing on crops and animals in their community. Students in Beaver Dam view and post their comments and questions.

As part of her continuing activities in international education, UW-Madison education professor Margaret (Maggie) Hawkins initiated this global digital storytelling project. She calls it “Stories Without Borders.”

Hawkins’s goal is to connect youth across the globe through digital e-communication. In this case, that meant taking computers and video cameras to a primary school in Uganda and getting a modem for internet access.  And oh, by the way, electricity, too. 

Through the power of video, youth from China to the U.S. to Uganda share and explore their worlds through stories, images, information, opinions, and questions as they learn how to create and negotiate digital texts and technologies.

Hawkins’s primary areas of interest include language and literacy studies, global education, and teacher education. All come together in the Stories Without Borders project.

Fascinating insights on this program come from Todd L., a former UW graduate student who visited one of the Ugandan sites in Summer 2012. On his blog he posted a number of reflections about his experience as he observed the Uganda youth watching one of the Chinese videos:

“The Lweza kids were spellbound, watching every second of the videos and straining to understand the Chinese students’ English. One of the videos was about finding the first signs of spring in Huxian. This brought forth all kinds of questions. The Ugandan children were incredulous that the leaves would all fall off the trees leaving the branches completely bare for several months. “How do you get food to eat?” I had my laptop with me and showed them pictures of a snowy Madison morning. “Do you have to stay indoors all the time?” I didn’t even attempt to tell them about all the fishermen (fisherpeople) out on the ice all winter. . .”

The Stories Without Borders project has three primary goals:

• to increase English language and literacy skills for under-served, at-risk students globally,
• to support development of technology skills of project participants, and
• to engage youth in cross-cultural communications, raising awareness and understanding of global others and themselves.

Participating in the project are two sites in Uganda, two in Wisconsin, and one in China. Youth participants in each site are 11 – 12 years old, and their video making and interactions are facilitated by an adult.  Some sites are connected with schools and some are not, although the project is never part of a school curriculum.

The following exchange occurred between youth in Beaver Dam Wisconsin and youth in Rwentutu (a rural community in western Uganda). It exemplifies how the exchanges support learning:

BDBD: Do you have cheetahs by you?
RM: Yes, we have cheetahs by us but they are in mountains.
BD: BD: Are animals a big part of your culture?
RM: Animals are a big part of our culture because they are used when marrying, totems, and transport.  Examples are donkey and camel.
BDBD: What is a totem? How do you use them when marrying? Are they presents at weddings? What other kinds of transportation do you use besides the donkey and camel?

Hawkins plans to continue working with the current sites, and adding more in the near future.  She is developing research teams in each site to better track and document participation and interaction, and hopes that ultimately the project will yield significant insights into the potential effects of such participation in global digital exchanges on the language and literacy development of youth, and on their emerging understandings of themselves and others in a global world.