Case Study - Week 5 - 18 in the Bay

I decided to do this as the case study for this week's module on Finding Voice. I got the idea from fellow classmates on hypothes.is. It was suggested that this goes along great with this week's theme. And they were right. 18 in the Bay is a series of projects put together by Matter and a group of high school seniors in the San Francisco Bay area. Here they are given a wide variety of ways of sharing their personal stories and having their voices heard.  I love that through a series of assignments, we get such a rich set of stories, each uniquely their own but each sharing a common themes. I love the authentic quality of their stories, down to the hand drawn artifacts collected from students.

How I spend my free time

How I spend my free time

Time at school

My mood

Daily mood

Timeline

Timeline

Timeline

Things I care and think about

What's important to me

How I've changed how I feel about people's perception of me and vice versa

The variety is types of assignments is great. I particularly liked the use of SnapChat for one of the assignments, Snap That. Here you can see glimpses of a day in the life of a student from this school. You see what they find interesting, what they think is important and what they consider share worthy.

https://medium.com/18-in-the-bay/snap-that-a715143eea93

The assignments given to students really allow students to explore their creativity and share their stories in many different ways. An assignment could be to create a "mix tape" and upload it to SoundCloud. It could be to write an essay or poetry. Or it is like the assignments listed above. Through participatory storytelling, we get a rich and intricate picture of the life of an 18 year old in the Bay area. All students are different individuals who share common emotions and experiences. And through their stories, we can relate to their feelings as teenagers entering adulthood. There is excitement and anxiety all at the same time, and from this series of projects we get to experience that with them. The students are given the freedom and space to tell their stories from a place of authenticity -- real life experiences of hurt, fear, sadness, joy and excitement. A great example of this is the essay "Fucking Cops Man..." Here is an excerpt:

"They aggressively but cautiously walked towards us and told us to put our hands up. Since I was the first anybody could see they checked me and my friend first. "

I would love to incorporate projects like the ones in 18 in the Bay in my chemistry classroom. It might be tough since I teach chemistry. But maybe I can incorporate some of their storytelling projects and combine that with how they see chemistry all around them. Students could record little snippets of chemistry they see throughout a given week and tie that to the current unit. For example, in a unit looking at gases and pressure, students can take photos or videos of examples of various gas laws in their everyday lives. A student could take a picture of a potato chip bag that is inflated from the increase in gas volume due to an increase in altitude. I will definitely need to keep thinking of ways to incorporate participatory collaborative storytelling into my classroom, and 18 in the Bay has definitely sparked some ideas. If you haven't checked this out yet, this really is such a good example of how to use collaborative digital storytelling in the classroom.