Case Study 15

'Digital Dreaming Project' brought to life the traditional stories of the Yarrabah district people in Far North Queensland. A literacy and numeracy software package designed specifically for indigenous and ESL (English as a second language) students was developed by the Project Coordinator to bring traditional stories to life and facilitate cross-curricular integrated learning. For the ASISTM project, the students produced an animation of the story “Wunyami - The Place of the Hole in the Nose”, following a visit to Green Island with community elders. This group of students was mentored by an artist who was contracted to develop a stop motion animation of a separate story, ‘The Legend of Gulnyaruby’.

Full Story...

Full Story

The story of the project

Cohorts of students visited sacred locations with Aboriginal elders, listening to and digitally recording each story and then, in the ASISTM project, learning the skills to animate the story. Using a variety of art forms, including sculpture, clay, cardboard and plasticine, students created significant objects and then utilised stop-motion software to produce the animation. Voice-overs were also added by the students. Recordings of traditional songs were mixed with contemporary sounds to create tracks the students could connect with.

The Digital Dreaming Project was the catalyst for the employment of a local elder who worked as a Teacher Associate with classes on traditional language, stories, dance and culture and this was a critical factor in the success of the project. The resultant multimedia was then placed on the school intranet at Yarrabah, for access by all students, staff and community members at Yarrabah.

The Technology engaged with traditional culture on many levels:

• Digital videos used to record the stories.
• Stop-motion software used to animate.
• Sound recording software used to narrate and develop sound tracks.
• Programming software used to collate the stories.
• Digital Dreaming software and networking software used to share the stories.

multimedia package: 

• The story could be listened to by younger students and coloured in online.
• Students could listen to the story and view the animation.
• Students could read it as an online book.
• Students involved in building the animation engaged with a range of literacy & numeracy concepts including:

                     o Storyboarding the animation.
                     o Building the set (measuring)
                     o Filming the animation (frame rates & frames per second)
                     o Problem solving: camera angles, hiding props.
 

Cross –Curricular Integrated learning

The multimedia stories were a springboard for all areas of learning, with teachers able to improve literacy and numeracy, explore the science in the stories, and with strong links into the school’s music and performing arts program. The production of art pieces and sculpture also provided art teachers with a focus to link into the project.

Professional Artist and Animator models the process

Aligned to the student work on their story, a professional artist was employed to bring another story, The Legend of Gulnyaruby” to life. Indigenous characters, canoes, a cassowary, turtles, several rocks and a multitude of trees were sculpted, with local indigenous people providing advice about the authenticity of the models. This included advice on appropriate body scarring and filming of local people walking through the bush to assist with making the animation look as realistic as could be achieved. Set development and utilising wave pools for the water scenes were used to generate reality in the scenes. This consultation increased collaboration between the school and community representatives, resulting in ongoing positive linkages.

Students observed a hands-on commercial quality animation being built by an artist. They learnt from his experiences and implemented their own project under his guidance and that of their teacher. It was an ongoing learning experience for all involved, that evolved as the project progressed.

As with the building of the characters and sets, the filming of the scenes was an ongoing task throughout the entire project. The filming of the ‘Legend of Gulnyaruby’ was managed by an ‘easiest to hardest’ principle; that is, the least complicated scenes were filmed first and as the artist/animator improved in confidence and skill, the more complicated scenes were tackled. The student animation followed a similar progression in that we commenced filming our first scene while we were still negotiating a solution for three scenes that had no real clear direction at that stage of the project.

Project successes

• Engagement of students and bringing other staff onboard with the project.
• The subject content being meaningful and significant for the students.
• The development of software to support the project.
• The linkages developed between the school and the community.
• The learning possibilities provided by having a professional artist working with the students.
• The engagement of a Teacher Associate who was a local elder with the community.
• The capacity for this process to be utilised by other indigenous communities to record culturally important local stories.

The Project Coordinator, Jason Evert, emphasised the importance of a project such as this from an indigenous cultural perspective
“Many current students would not have had an opportunity to engage with their culture & heritage in the form of traditional stories. In particular, this project has successfully provided students with a learning experience that allows them to ‘tap into’ things they are familiar with, and consequently become engaged learners in their school.”

Jason has been recognised for his achievements with this project through the 2008 Microsoft Innovative Teacher Award, and he recently represent the project at the Asia Pacific Innovative Teachers forum in Kuala Lumpur At this conference he was recognised with one of four overall awards for thought leadership. The conference was represented by delegates selected from 15 countries throughout the Asia Pacific.

Whilst the two stories mentioned here are not publicly accessible, as they belong to the indigenous people of Yarrabah, there are examples of animated dreamtime stories accessible on the web at http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/
 

Further Information

Jason Evert
Project Coordinator
Head of Curriculum - ICT
Yarrabah State School
E-mail: jever20@eq.edu.au
Telephone: 07 4056 0666

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