Ahoy! Now that Digital Explorations’ website is up and running, I thought I would introduce myself in a different way from how my “About” page reads. I hopped aboard Digital Explorations in February and took up the position of “fellow.” Based out of San Francisco, I hold down the west coast seat and will soon be moving to Burlington for the summer to work more closely with Barbara and Alex. When not working on Digital Explorations I’m usually plugging away at The Modern Story (TMS). There’s an incredible number of youth media projects based in the bay area and I hope to continue collaborating with these talented groups of people to draw connections back across to VT and elsewhere.
What brought me to Digital Explorations (other than a call from Barbara!) is a curiosity about how best technology can be utilized to push innovation, communication, and education. A lot of “ation” there… Growing up in small town Maine, I found stories to be at the “cent-ah” of how people communicate with and relate to each other. Speaking plainly, there wasn’t a lot of internet or computers around growing up. When I began regularly using both in college I realized the heightened sense of ownership I had over my education when I was able to bring technology into my studies – specifically multimedia visual presentations/projects, digital storytelling, blogging, etc. The classroom grew. I’m a visual learner, a doer, and using cameras, computers, and the web helped me better organize, make sense of, and express what it was I was taking in in the classroom. Since graduating, I’ve been working inside and outside the classroom, in experiential education settings, and in international systems of education (namely India) working to consciously implement technology into classroom curricula, set up after school programs, and design programs of study that utilize multimedia tools. Technology for the sake of technology does not get my turbine spinning, rather it is the application of the technology that interests me – how can technological innovations weave into the realities/routines of everyday life to improve communication, learning, teaching, and, ultimately, understanding among and between different groups of people. It’s here that I find purpose in fiddling around with media editing software, cameras, and computers and teaching others to do so.
From time to time, I’ll write on this blog about current workshops and the development of the CCDE’s. I thought it might also be useful for me to profile websites, storytelling (digital & non) projects, and emerging/existing technologies that can be useful in organizing, creating, communicating, and teaching – Would this be useful to you as a reader? Stay tuned…
2 Comments
“Quality of Place” is a valuable concept to keep in mind when encouraging the increased use of technology in rural areas. It is important to teach people to use technology that enhances their life and values their traditions.
Absolutely, Paul. Do you read Wendell Berry? The farmer-poet is far from endorsing computers, but I often think about his “Sense of Place” and how tools such as cameras and computers can help individuals and communities of people explore and interpret and, therefore, understand their surroundings, their community. Barbara and Digital Explorations does an incredible job designing unique workshops for individual communities, really listening to the people and the needs of the community. For all the possibilities that technology provides, the foundation of the work still lies in storytelling and connecting people to each other, and this often starts with looking at people’s traditions. Maybe even a sense of stewardship for land and community will develop, and this is where I’m drawn to the idea that experience really does matter in how seemingly vocational trades or technological innovations are introduced, taught, and utilized. This is where opportunity lies, but also where there is tension.