My First Day at School

In this digital story, Chelsea who completed her third birthday in Jan 2008, recounts her first day at school in the nursery class. The conflicting emotions she is going through are interesting. Is her first day also her last? Or did she enjoy herself?
Created by Gasper D'souza

Second GoCreat DST Workshop: July 18 - 22

On July 18th, 2008, GoCreat began its second workshop with the students of the Department of Sociology, Goa University.
In all 8 students are participating in the 5 day workshop. What makes this special for us, is that as part of our small endeavour to create community media centers in Goa, the students created their own blog and will be encouraged to start regular blogging.
While the proceedings from the present workshop will be blogged live and hopefully, the students will continue blogging even after the end of the workshop thus creating a micro-community online. A good spin-off from the GoCreat DST workshop, we would think.
Let's see how this one pans out!

GoCreat's First Digital Story Screenings

Day 4 and 5 were intense with each participant working at a feverish pace, learning the ropes, and producing their very own stories.

Over the past 5 days at the workshop, they polished their scripts, visualised possibilities, created storyboards and finally put it all together today (May 30) as their first Digital stories.

GoCreat was privileged to have 5 distinguished persons join us at the end of the workshop to preview and comment on the work. We had Jonnathan Josenhans (Film animation), Apurva Kulkarni (Artist, Art historian and critique), Rahul Srivastave (Writer and free lance researcher), Anita Haladi (Economics lecturer, film buff and organiser of training for students in film) and Isabel Vaz (English lecturer, Director of drama and film and as she called herself a ‘story teller’). We had an enlightening discussion on the possibilities and limitations of the DST.

For the facilitators Gasper and Alito it was an encouraging and learning experience. As one of the participants put it: "We gained so much... a voice... a craft... and a path."

A more detailed evaluation of the workshop and its process will follow.

But now, without ado, here are the films...

Sanvad (Dialogue) | Milan
(Marathi | Playing time: 4.11)


Dreamland | Nileema
(English | Playing time: 2:17)


My Hobby | Joseph
(English | Playing time: 2:28)


Lost in the Market | Preeti
(English | Playing time: 1:46)


So Often | Pamela
(English | Playing time: 8:29)

A story in 60 minutes

Today was a day of intense hands on work on the computers. Participants were introduced to Microsoft's Photo Story software. Through this very user-friendly software, they learnt how to sequence images, add voice-over, apply motion - pan and zoom and use inter-slide transitions.




Next was an exciting exercise. Participants were given a set of 20 images and 5 soundtracks (of various moods) for background music. Each had to select any 6 images of their choice and, using voiceovers, transitions, movements and other techniques learnt earlier, had to make a short story.



It was interesting to see the different stories than came from the same set of 20 images!

Fun by Joseph


Lonely by Nileema


Hope by Pamela


Musings by Milan


Confusion by Preeti


The above videos are first-time efforts by participants as an exercise in digital story telling and were completed in one hour. More to come as the workshop progresses.

GoCreat Workshop on DST

Today, May 26, GoCreat begins a 5-day workshop on Digital Storytelling (see brochure). We have 5 very enthusiastic participants with varying backgrounds, all raring to go! Among us we have, a journalist, an artist, two MA students of Sociology and one 14-year old student of std 9.



Alito started the participants off with an introduction to the concept of DST and the film "Mom Not Mom" was screened (watch the film on the Digital Storytelling Center website).



The participants then expressed their feelings after viewing the film using crayon on paper. And boy, did we get variety!


- Pamela


- Joseph


- Milan


- Nileema


- Preeti


- Alito


- Gasper

Next everyone got hands on experience in basic photo editing using the free Google software - Picasa.

By the end of the day, participants put together their first draft story in about 250 words. They then evaluated their own stories using the Seven Principles of Storytelling. This is the story they will be working on, over the next 5 days, converting it into a DST.



The current DST workshop is a followup of our experiences working with the Siolim Diaries project viewed at: siolimdiaries.blogspot.com.

What's in a Story?

Rahul Srivastava, co-director of PUKAR, Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research, a Mumbai-based research initiative delivered a talk to members of GoCreat on what makes a good story.

Rahul has written on the environment, popular culture and new knowledge practices. He has studied sociology and anthropology in India and the United Kingdom.

Listen to excerpts of Rahul's discourse...

Challenging times for journalists

"Rarely can a single person excel at so many skill sets"
- Steve Herman, South Asia correspondent, Voice of America

Steve Herman, delivering his address at the seminar on Convergence in Media at St Xavier's College, Mapusa, spoke about the perils and challenges that technology has thrown at media houses and journalists.

Does asking a single journalist to work in multiple media simultaneously reduce the quality of the final product? With so many sources of information, can we trust all we see or read on the Internet?

According to Steve, as long as media houses and journalists remain responsible and consumers are able to discern the factual from the fictitious, we are headed for a truly positive media revolution.

Listen to excerpts from Steve Herman's talk (8min 7MB):