Digital Hero Book

The Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) has provided an intern to Molotech to assist with website production. Jessica Dorfman, Outreach Coordinator at BAVC, placed Anthony Ngo with us for a 60-hour internship. BAVC has a program to teach web design and video production skills to final year school learners and then place them in organisations or companies to gain hands-on workplace experience. We thank BAVC and Anthony for this opportunity and look forward to working together over the next few months. –>

Last year at Stanford I met Anjali Gopolan, the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated founder of the Naz Foundation in India. She was interested in the Digital Hero Book Project (DHBP) and I’ve been talking to her people on the ground in New Delhi. If all goes well, a few of the youths at the Naz Foundation house there will participate in the pilot, making it a South Africa, USA and India project. –>

I met with Sarah Kramer of StoryCorps to introduce the Digital Hero Book Project (DHBP) and ask for general advice. StoryCorps is a US-based project to instruct and inspire people to record each others’ stories in sound. Sarah made very useful suggestions, building on what Joe had spoken about. We discussed interview questions for the DHBP participants, logistics around doing the actual audio recordings, e.g. at different schools using a portable kit or at a permanent studio where the school learners come to record for a day. –>

I met with Joe Richman of Radio Diaries to introduce the Digital Hero Book Project (DHBP) and ask for general advice. The award-winning Radio Diaries “works with ordinary people to document their own lives for public radio.” For example, Thembi’s AIDS Diary covers a year in the life of a South African teenager who is struggling to live with AIDS.

Joe offered this advice on producing good quality audio stories: 1) it’s a real skill to produce compelling audio, 2) it takes a lot more time to edit than you think, so 3) if you’re working with a group of youth, make their involvement as simple as possible, e.g. get them to interview each other, read from prepared texts or record very short sound bites such as their dog barking.

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I headed up to Boston for the day to meet with Gail Breslow, Director of the Intel Computer Clubhouse project. The very first computer clubhouse is located at the Museum of Science in Boston. Today there are 100 clubhouses around the world, each providing a creative and safe after-school learning environment where young people from under-served communities work with adult mentors to explore their own ideas, develop skills, and build confidence in themselves through the use of technology. –>

I flew to New York for a series of meetings around the Digital Hero Book Project (DHBP). The first was with Ed Gragart, Executive Director of the International Education and Resource Network USA (iEARN-USA), to discuss the possibilities of the DHBP becoming an iEARN project.

iEARN, made up of all the country chapters around the world, such as iEARN-USA, has been using technology to connect learners in classrooms since 1988, so it has a wealth of experience in tech-based educational projects — especially on issues of privacy and cross-cultural differences — and also solid infrastructure. By becoming a project in their portfolio of around 150 projects, the DHBP can be made available to their network of schools and use their website for interaction between participating learners. It really is an amazing network: over 22,000 schools and 2 million kids. Participating teachers have their own discussion board to discuss the project and support each other.

It was agreed that the DHBP will join the iEARN as a project for its members. –>

Shortly before the Stanford University winter break, six of us held a brainstorm to discuss the business strategy for the Digital Hero Book Project (DHBP). Sustainability is a key to any project; the aim of the three-hour session was to brainstorm ways of how to generate revenue through the project.

John Kuner, an attendant and Fellow on the Digital Vision Program, made a funny vlog about the event.

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The South-African based Shuttleworth Foundation, which invests in projects that offer unique and innovative solutions to educational challenges faced by the developing world, has part-funded the Digital Hero Book Project (DHBP).

The funding is important for two reasons: firstly, by making a significant contribution to the pilot-phase budget it has made the project possible and, secondly, it is an endorsement of the DHBP as a worthwhile ICT-in-education initiative.

We thank the Shuttleworth Foundation for their support and look forward to working with them on this project. –>

We are pleased to announce that Prospect Sierra Middle School have joined the Digital Hero Book Project (DHBP) pilot. This means that US-based school students will engage the students at a number of schools based in and around Cape Town.

Fostering international dialogue between youth from different countries and cultures has always been a major goal of the DHBP. The participation of Prospect Sierra’s 7th grade class will make this possible. –>

Jonathan Morgan held a full-day workshop with a number of teachers and Khanya facilitators, training them how to facilitate hero booking with their learners. The participants were given “homework” to do during their upcoming summer break: each person will have to create their own hero book before the follow-up workshop to be held in February 2007. This is line with the REPSSI motto: “you can’t teach it if you haven’t done it.” –>