The Turkey Maiden Computer Game: a Project of the UCF Cultural

Puerto Ricans in Central Florida 1940s-1980s: A History Curriculum

A Project of the Digital Ethnography Lab University of Central Florida School of Visual Arts and Design www.digitalethnography.dm.ucf.edu

Puerto Ricans in Central Florida 1940s-1980s: A History: A Project of the Digital Ethnography Lab

Drs. Patricia Silver and Natalie Underberg received a $22,236 grant from the Florida Humanities Council to create a public exhibit and program based in visual memories and oral narratives from 40 years of Puerto Rican movement to and life in Central Florida. The exhibit included 4 digital stories, relating targeted portions of the history best told using visual digital media. To make the exhibit adaptable for a variety of venues, the digital stories were loaded on mobile video players for individual viewing and on DVD for streaming to a monitor.

During March 2009, the exhibit was on display in Orange and Osceola counties, where the majority of Puerto Ricans in Central Florida reside. Following March 2009, the exhibit has been kept available for travel from the Orange County Regional History Center. The stories contributed laid the foundation for a community history of Puerto Ricans in Central Florida. With the permission of participants, these digitally recorded oral histories are being archived in the Orange County Regional History Center, available to future generations.

The project was comprised of a combination of oral history and digital storytelling. Oral history is composed of the stories and memories of people who have been able to preserve their stories through passing them down to family members and friends. Since the 1940s, people such as anthropologists, folklorists, and historians have been able to preserve these oral histories through the use of tape recorders. Now through the use of digital recorders it is much easier to capture oral history and preserve it for future generations. For more information, visit http://alpha.dickinson.edu/oha/about.html.

Digital storytelling is a way for people to create what are essentially 2-3 minute films using editing software. Digital stories use audio, video, photography, music, and other elements to convey narrative in a format that can be preserved for future generations.

The digital stories that formed part of this project were drawn from the oral history research in one of two ways. Certain stories were identified for their story quality from the interviews themselves, so that the recorded interview becomes the voiceover track of the digital tale. Others resulted from first identifying the potential for a particularly compelling individual tale and then inviting the interviewee to participate in the creation of a digital story with the guidance of an experienced digital story creator. This involved follow-up interviews or meetings with the storyteller to ask him or her to find pictures that would best illustrate certain portions of the story.

In the digital stories produced for this project, Underberg and CREATE staff member and video editor Victor Randle focused on personal narratives that highlighted several key themes introduced in the two-dimensional exhibit, such as: Puerto Rican migration history and diversity in Central Florida; Puerto Rican engineers at the Kennedy Space Center; making a cultural home; and putting down roots. For example, Lilly Carrasquillo, an artist and teacher from Puerto Rico tells a story of bringing her art and culture to Central Florida, while Ernesto Peña Roque relates his experience of making a cultural home in Central Florida through transplanting the tradition of paso fino horses to the area.

This curriculum packet adapts ideas from the Digital Storytelling Cookbook (available from the Center for Digital Storytelling at www.storycenter.org) and applies them to the process of working collaboratively with oral history and cultural heritage project participants to co-produce digital stories.

Understanding Joe Lambert’s “Seven Techniques for Effective Digital Storytelling”

In recent years, the usefulness of digital storytelling as a pedagogical tool has emerged in the educational literature (see, for example, Tom Banaszewki’s article “Digital Storytelling Finds Its Place in the Classroom.” Multimedia Schools, v9 (2002): pp. 32-36; Dusti Howell and Deanne Howell’s article “What’s Your Digital Story?” Library Media Connection v22 (2003): pp. 40-42; and Sara Kadjer’s article “Enter Here: Personal Narrative and Digital Storytelling.” English Journal v93 (2004): pp. 64-69). The most well-known model in the United States is probably that developed by the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS). CDS, located in Berkeley, CA, conducts digital storytelling workshops around the country. At these workshops participants learn how to create their own digital stories. They begin by assessing their skills in several areas (including storytelling and technical expertise), and then learn about seven elements of effective digital storytelling (including such aspects as point of view and economy). They then engage in a “story circle” during which participants share story ideas and offer each other feedback. A brief introduction to digitizing photographs and other materials is offered as well as an overview of iMovie, a user-friendly video editing software. Participants then finalize their “script” (the words they will record as a voiceover) and digitize and arrange the photographs, video, and other media they will use in the digital story. Recording voiceovers and editing the story in iMovie are the final steps in the digital storytelling process.

Lambert (2002) outlines seven elements of effective digital storytelling: point (of view), dramatic question, emotional content, voice (of the storyteller on the voiceover), the soundtrack (effective use of music), economy (effectively using a small amount of images and video and a short text), and pacing (combining such elements as quick edits with slow pans to maximum effect).

Digital stories need a clear point of view and to raise a basic dramatic question. You need to make clear whose story you are telling, from what perspective, and to make the audience wonder what will happen next. I made a digital story at a Digital Storytelling workshop a year or so ago about my reaction to the death of a favorite aunt. The story begins by showing a picture of a flowery pillow on a chair and the image stays on the screen so the viewer can ruminate on it while my narration explains that this is a pillow my aunt gave me. The sequence ends with the words “But what most people don’t know is the real reason I keep the pillow in my office,” while the screen fades to black. This sets up the following question for the audience: “What’s the story behind the pillow?” The rest of the story is designed to answer that basic question, and it becomes the hook for a story about a funeral, an obituary, and a meditation on why the things that are recorded about us in the official record don’t really capture the meaning of a life.

Other techniques Lambert outlines include economy and pacing. Economy in digital storytelling means keeping in mind that the story can be effectively illustrated with a small number of images and video and a relatively short text. The story also needs proper pacing, meaning that it effectively alternates between fast-paced and slow-paced editing (slow paced: slow-panning on a still image, using calmer music; fast-paced: using quick edits—a rapid-fire succession of images to suggest energy, using upbeat music). In the example discussed above, slow-paced editing was used in the opening sequence of the story to encourage the audience to stay with and maintain in their minds that image and of the pillow and the thought that accompanied it. Montage (a quick succession of images, often involving a repeated showing of images that appeared earlier in the story) is a common technique in digital storytelling that can convey a sense of summing up (the visual equivalent of “so, you can see that” or “in conclusion”). This can set up the end of your story and prepare the audience for a kind of rationale or moral for the tale.

Finally, according to Lambert, two other important elements of digital storytelling in addition to the visual element (finding just the right image to help create the mood) are necessary: voice (recording the audio track) and utilizing the power of the soundtrack (using music to help create the mood). The voice of the narrator can play a significant role in establishing the context—your voice can convey the mood of the story, whether it be low and deliberate or light and bubbly (and it may vary throughout for emphasis). The soundtrack, like the pictures, raises the question of copyright, which is complex. In general, if you plan to use your story outside of a strictly classroom or personal context, you will need to find music which is not copyrighted (the same applies to images).

Assignment: Digital Story Analysis

Evaluate the one of the digital stories from the Puerto Ricans in Central Florida 1940s-1980s: A History project (available at www.digitalethnography.dm.ucf. edu/pr/community.html) according to the seven elements of effective digital storytelling outlined by Joe Lambert in the Digital Storytelling Cookbook. Note the use of each of these elements in the story and discuss whether and how effectively the digital story uses them:

 Point  Dramatic Question

 Emotional Content

 Voice

 Soundtrack

 Economy

 Pacing

Developing Digital Stories from Oral History Materials

With heritage preservation projects, it helps to be aware of the kinds of stories that would be likely to make compelling digital stories, and to use these guidelines to help identify and develop narratives. Look for:

 stories that highlight major themes that relate to the heritage project at hand, which may include work, leisure, identity, struggle and success, historical events, and traditional culture.  stories that have appropriate pictures and other visual elements (digital stories are stories in two registers—the visual and the aural)  stories that have compelling emotional content (resonate with universal human themes) and have a basic dramatic question (makes the audience want to find out how the initial situation will be resolved)

To develop digital stories for heritage preservation projects, the following steps serve as a helpful guide:

 identify compelling stories or story kernels that are accompanied by images  work with the storyteller to develop a storyboard  edit the storyboard and consult with the storyteller for approval

For example, the story about bringing paso fino horses to Orlando on a plane (see project Website for story by Ernesto Peña Roque) had potential to become a compelling digital story for the oral history exhibit because it was:

 from a man who came to Orlando in 1950s  a funny and poignant story  about a popular past-time in Puerto Rico that has been transplanted to Central Florida  narrator has excellent pictures, documents, video

Assignment: Identify and develop a story idea for a digital story based on oral history materials. Follow the above guidelines and include the following in your assignment: one sentence description of story; rationale for choosing and shaping the particular story (can include as a bullet-point list as in the above

example); and timeline and plan for completing the project in consultation with the storyteller.

Creating a Digital Storytelling Script

Now that you have an idea for the story from the last assignment, the next step is to try to create or storyboard the story. To accomplish the thought process necessary to create a digital story, consider the following visual storytelling questions:

 Where do I want to show a literal visual representation of what is being told?  Where do I want to show a figurative visual representation of what is being told?  Where do I want a slow pan to encourage the viewer to linger on an image?  Where do I want a quick edit (montage of many images in quick succession or very brief presentation of image) to convey movement or excitement?  What kind of music (style) best accompanies your story?

Assignment: create a script for a digital story using the Digital Storytelling Script Worksheet below in consultation with the storyteller:

Image

Effects

Transitions

Voiceover

Soundtrack