Comments on: Using “One in 8 Million” in the Classroom http://markberkeygerard.com/2009/06/using-%e2%80%9cone-in-8-million%e2%80%9d-in-the-classroom/ Notes on Teaching Digital Storytelling Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:19:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Kevin http://markberkeygerard.com/2009/06/using-%e2%80%9cone-in-8-million%e2%80%9d-in-the-classroom/comment-page-1/#comment-22 Kevin Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:52:37 +0000 http://markberkeygerard.com/?p=231#comment-22 Glad to see this post. This past semester I taught a multimedia documentary class and also used "One in 8 Million" often for class discussion. One important thing to point out is that not all the pieces are perfect, and it was useful to prod students into discussing what could have been stronger. Oftentimes, the inescapable time pressure on the journalists prevented more diverse or extensive photography, for example. The breadth of the stories is also very useful to discuss in class. There are several in which the subject is retelling something from the past, which always makes photography challenging since one can only photograph the present. Seeing how they handled it in this series was informative. Finally, this series helped highlight the difference between a profile -- which is really what these are -- and a story with a narrative arc. During the semester, I came to feel that the latter is very rare in multimedia projects right now, while the former is more limited in its ability to hold a viewer's attention beyond the standard 2-3 minutes. To hold interest beyond that amount of time, a viewer needs to be invested in both the character and the tension of not knowing how things turned out. Great post, and a great teaching/learning resource! Kevin Glad to see this post. This past semester I taught a multimedia documentary class and also used “One in 8 Million” often for class discussion. One important thing to point out is that not all the pieces are perfect, and it was useful to prod students into discussing what could have been stronger. Oftentimes, the inescapable time pressure on the journalists prevented more diverse or extensive photography, for example.

The breadth of the stories is also very useful to discuss in class. There are several in which the subject is retelling something from the past, which always makes photography challenging since one can only photograph the present. Seeing how they handled it in this series was informative.

Finally, this series helped highlight the difference between a profile — which is really what these are — and a story with a narrative arc. During the semester, I came to feel that the latter is very rare in multimedia projects right now, while the former is more limited in its ability to hold a viewer’s attention beyond the standard 2-3 minutes. To hold interest beyond that amount of time, a viewer needs to be invested in both the character and the tension of not knowing how things turned out.

Great post, and a great teaching/learning resource!

Kevin

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