Saturday Class – Digital Storytelling
Six Saturdays throughout the semester the students spend time in Digital Storytelling class. It is a un-graded class that teaches them to document their time at Alzar School through video. Not only does it help them learn a new skill that is applicable in our world today, but at the end, they will have a video to take with them from their semester that they can keep forever. Students can either make a video on their own or collaborate with others. They each identified the aspects of their semester experience that are meaningful to them and that they wanted to recreate for everyone to see. As students put the final touches on their videos I talked to a few groups about their project and why they chose the topic they did.
“I Love Alzar Because…” by Carly Chasen, Dylan Zgodny and Kylee Wood- We are trying to capture why everyone loves this place. Everyone has a unique favorite part or reason why they love it and we wanted to capture that sentiment.
“Dear Future Alzar Students” by Ruffin Henry, Nate Leary- We wanted a funny and entertaining video that shows some of the things we have learned the hard way while at Alzar. It is relevant to future students but also includes experiences that are specific to our semester.
“Oh the Places We Went” by Abe Tolkoff- My video is a compilation of student interviews and videos of the various landscapes we have visited. I chose this topic because I like taking pictures of landscapes; they are meaningful to me and I wanted to include other peoples’ thoughts too.
“Change” by Alivia Van Berkel- Change is the biggest thing I’ve felt during my time here and I wanted to show it in my video. We have been through a lot of change already, both personally and as a group, and we will continue to change.
Saturday Class at Alzar School teaches the valuable skill of digital storytelling while helping students be more aware of the larger skills and takeaways of their Alzar School experiences as a whole. Through their video projects, students are free to test out topics, be creative, try, fail and succeed in communicating a wide range of messages to a diverse set of peers.