Information from Tyson Yunkaporta Aboriginal Pedagogies at the Cultural Interface - 2007-2009 Draft report for DET on Indigenous Research project.

Tyson Yunkaporta has completed a PhD and has thoroughly investigated two important questions.

How can teachers engage with Aboriginal knowledge. - applying cultural interface theory to pd - reconciling principle of the cultural interface

How can teachers use Aboriginal knowledge authentically and productively in schools? application of Aboriginal processes rather than indigenised content

2007-2009 research

This presentation attempts to borrow some of what we can learn from his research into Aboriginal Pedagogies and apply it in a Digital Storytelling context.

Organising ideas
Country/Place
OI.1 Australia has two distinct Indigenous groups, Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
OI.2 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities maintain a special connection to and responsibility for Country/Place throughout all of Australia.
OI.3 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have unique belief systems and are spiritually connected to the land, sea, sky and waterways.

Culture
OI.4 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies have many Language Groups.
OI.5 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ ways of life are uniquely expressed through ways of being, knowing, thinking and doing.
OI.6 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have lived in Australia for tens of thousands of years and experiences can be viewed through historical, social and political lenses.

People
OI.7 The broader Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies encompass a diversity of nations across Australia.
OI.8 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have sophisticated family and kinship structures.
OI.9 Australia acknowledges the significant contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people locally and globally.

"This way of learning organises notions of holistic, global, scaffolded and independent learning orientations in Aboriginal Students"

In other words seeing the whole prior to working on the various parts. Whereas Western notions tend to teach the parts to construct the whole, many students need this holistic picture. It works for non Aboriginal and Aboriginal students.

The overall shape and structure of a text needs to be made explicit,
Teaching about Digital Storytelling allows for this way of learning.

Today we are going to tell your stories using Digital texts - the applications are storyboarding, movie making and editing software. We are going to tell the story of how you came here, to the Southern Yorke Peninsula.

When creating digital texts, we need to understand that our students inhabit these places all the time.

Their digital habitats

In 60 seconds online

72 hours of video to YouTube
2 million Google searches
20 million photo views
278 000 tweets
104 000 photos shared on Snapchat
15 000 tracks downloaded from iTunes
41 000 Facebook posts

Within these places they create their own code of conduct, symbols and meaning. We need to ensure they have the tools to deconstruct and reconstruct intention meanings, hidden stories and apply a critical lens to safety protocols, storytelling and sharing.

When we tell a digital story we are contributing to the vast array of media and joining in it's traditions. According Mike Wesch a Digital Anthropologist ... when Media change, relationships change and when relationships change - our conversations change and our conversations decide who can say what, and who wil be heard, so we are looking at broad cultural change. (Mike Wesch 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwyCAtyNYHw&index=3&list=FLGihOFYRD6pbJAWsj... )

Now that media is no longer a one way transfer, as in the age of television and mass media, it is vital for students to be able to construct meaning, to have their voices heard and be given feedback so they can being a cycle of reciprocal learning. To do this they need to understand Media.

In the Aust curriclum, Tfel and Child protection curriculum

"This way of learning - Aboriginal pedagogy as group oriented, localized and connected to real life purposes and contexts. The motivation for learning is inclusion in the community" Yunkaporta 2007-2009

When we create digital texts we need to be conscious of how we ask students to collaborate and then share their work with a real audience. These students from Oodnadatta had no experience with iMovie, yet create this movie within an hour of being taught about Media text construction.

Sugatra Mitra's Hole in the Wall project is evidence that when we place digital tools in a community place children from ages 6-12 will teach themselves how to use it, regardless of language, education or economic status. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE5GX3U3BYQ


Creating knowledge, to help the community.

Understanding the power of the image, how to frame a scene, what meanings are intended from cameral angles and shots, are part of the media construction process. It is different from storyboarding, and making a plan. it is about the power of symbols and images to evoke emotion and connection to the message. In this way Digital storytelling can be used to support the pedagogy of images and symbols. How do we utilise the student’s experiences of the world, using all their senses to build symbolic meaning.

Switch to Digital storytelling workshop slide on camera angles and shots, use of sound and rule of thirds.

http://bit.ly/13CbJnJ

Kinesthetic and hands on - let them play with the technology and see how it works. Allow students to act the story rather than verbalise it. The New Media Awards competition is called "one word" imagine setting the challenge of creating a movie that sends a message but only has one word. Could be "Place" "Listen" "Act" "Care"

Relating learning to place

I once gave my video camera to an Aboriginal Student who interviewed her Aunty/Foster mother. She filmed her art and asked questions which prompted her to tell a story of being stolen from her family. It was profoundly important for the student to tie place and space with new learning. I don't show that movie now, out of respect for the participants who did not give their permission for a broad audience.

Getting students to explore their space starting with the local and leading them into the global is an one of the 8 ways pedagogies. it makes sense for all students.

Grounding the learning in the personal narrative.

The power of the interview. Close ups and cutaways. Speaking with Aboriginal people and getting them to recall their knowledge.

See Aunty Connie video on slide 14. The power of the cutaway image. Voiceovers. Silence.

http://bit.ly/13CbJnJ

Sharing stories to crete new knowledge to support the development of identity.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Heroesjourney.svg

"Aboriginal pedagogy as group oriented, localised and connected to real life purposes and contexts. The motivation for learning is inclusion in the community"

Mediated texts dominate the spaces in which our students inhabit. A chance to create a medi text that is important for the group, the community and has a real audience and putpose is vital.

View this mvie of Aboriginal learners from "Oodnadatta" explaining whta it means to be a powerful elarner for a Literacy summit held in Adelaide last year. Real purpose, real meaning -real voices. They completed this task having never used iMovie before.

As Sugra Mitra has demonstrated with his famous hole in the wall project in India, it is neither location or economic status or culture that determines whether a child can engage with digital technologies. Within days of putting a computer in a community place, children and adults had taught themselves to surf the web, hack code and create programs for themselves.

"That Linear perspective in Western pedagogyhas been identified as a key factor in Marginalising Aboriginal people and preventing us from constructing our own identities"

Harness the overlap - lateral thinking, allowing students to experiment, revisit, cyclic learning rather than hierachical content.

Look at texts that play with beginning middle and end.

MAKING AND RESPONDING

Making– using processes, techniques, knowledge and skills to make art works

Responding – exploring, responding to, analysing and interpreting artworks.

MEDIA ARTS IS knowledge, understanding and skills in working with communications technologies as media artists and audiences.

Audience - Who will be viewing?

Structure - storyboarding, beginning, middle, end

Cohesion and Ideas - editing

Devices - camera angles, shots

Storytelling/Multiple and complex genres - persuade

Critique - whose voices are being heard?

Show a model of the work students will produce for this topic.

Map out the structures, explain the patterns and codes.

Storyboarding but making sure students get a chance to play first then map out their story.

A visual represntation of 8 ways

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKhSYAyc54c


tutotrial on using iMovie to edit.