August 1, 2017 Partners Meeting

Alan, Colin, Gregor, Jutta, James, Liam

Juliana sends regrets (poor conference hotel wi-fi) and the following update via Slack: "We are adjusting the work plan with the new information that Jutta sent to us about the budget, and I will put together, as soon as I came back to Colombia, the documents that Jess required in her last email."

Introducing Gregor

Gregor Moss is a new developer at the IDRC who's been working with Alan on the web storytelling tools described at Web Storytelling Tools

Storytelling Tool Discussion

  • COLIN gave an introduction on this theme

    • expressing creatively within a community is a prerequisite for participation in the community
    • we still have problems getting stories on the web - information about our emerging groups
      • choice between expensive / technically complex & popular but proprietary platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
  • JAMES: do we want to test tools with youth?

    • COLIN: yes! even if very sketchy; we need to surface needed features like translation and localization
    • JAMES: from the African perspective, storytelling was a way in which different generations passed on knowledge, history
      • "when you tell someone to tell a story, they will be free"
        • a tool to bring the voices at the margins to the centre
        • environmental facilitators
          • "when you look at the subject of exclusion"
          • "it's not just because of personality that we can't participate, but because of the existing environment"
          • trying to work both on environment (platforms, facilitating communication)
          • an environmental facilitator fixes a mismatch
  • ALAN: what other things should this tool have?

    • LIAM: one of the pieces we had thought about working on was video storytelling - adding that functionality would be useful?
      • ALAN: absolutely!
    • JUTTA: scaffolds for text such as grammar, spellchecking, glossaries
      • COLIN: we expect to provide this via UIO+ and other means; we anticipate having sound, video, other means in addition to text
        • fall back to supporting low bandwidth / mobile browsers / media
    • JUTTA: will we get into co-construction of stories; multiple authors, adding components, collaborative authoring
      • COLIN: this would be huge - different perspectives
    • JUTTA: would be good to collaborate with the Rhebus work we're doing for FLOE; annotation, collaboration, etc
    • JAMES: if someone can't write, what about drawing or sketching stories? Different options for telling a story.
      • trying to put the story into visual explanation - easier to understand?
      • ALAN: so maybe things like simplification, summary, rendition from picture symbols....
  • COLIN: can we set up a way to access this so others can try it? Maybe on the build site?

  • JUTTA: can we engage youth with learning differences as co-designers of the interface via David Perrera's hackathons or TIG?

    • ALAN will reach out to David about this
  • JAMES: will be working with youth groups in Rwanda in September/October, could test tools for feedback then

    • JUTTA: idea here would be to actually engage youth at this stage in trying out and using the designs
      • JAMES: trying to understand environment, how they interact with it

Budgets

We'll continue email contact regarding these.