A Reflection of A Place No More: Interactive Documentary "Welcome to Pine Point"

The authors of the piece used many different elements to engage the audience in their story’s experience. There were numerous tabs on each page of the site that created the effect that you were really paging through an old memory book. On most pages, you could flip through photos or different video clips, which was really engaging. The authors’ use of video clips and photos were not only engaging but were great choices in telling the story of Pine Point. Music clips, sound effects, and narration were also used throughout the presentation to turn the memory book into a documentary. I enjoyed how the narration included the stories of different people who lived in Pine Point, and that the authors used all of their stories to connect and drive home their theme of what community means to people.

Educational Impact

The story has a great message about how everyone in a community experiences that community in a different way and about how those people all come away with different memories of the time spent in that place, even after that place no longer exists. Building this type of presentation would teach students how to write a story with a strong message that can be shared with a large audience. Students would also learn how to engage in a multimedia project where they would need to use the elements of photography, video production, and sound production to create their story. The age group to create this type of presentation really could be any level K-12. The amount of content that would be expected of students to create would clearly differ based on the age group. I would love to try to have my students create a project like this either for my Digital Media course or for an ELA class. Students in Digital Media could create a documentary and I could use this in my ELA classroom to create an end-of-unit or story project. It would be a lot more engaging than a regular old slide deck with photos.

ISTE and Common Core Standards

The following ISTE standards would be addressed in the creation of a project like this:

1.1D: Technology Operations: Students would be expected to use different types of technological tools in order to create their project. They would have to be able to troubleshoot any issues that they may encounter while using those technologies.

1.2C: Intellectual Property: Students would have to create their own content, or if using content created by others know how to ask for permission to use that content and site it accordingly in their project.

1.3: Knowledge Constructor: Students would have to engage in research in order to gather all of the information for their project. They would have to evaluate which information they found would be suitable to include in their final presentation.

1.4: Innovative Designer: Students would have to plan out their story in order to properly build their presentation in an effective and engaging manner for their audience.

1.6: Creative Communicator: Students would have to figure out what platforms and technologies would be best suited for sharing their stories with a larger audience.

1.7.C: Project Teams: Students would collaborate with other students while completing their stories.

The following Common Core Standards would be addressed in the creation of a project like this:

CC.1.4: Writing for different purposes and audiences: Students would research, create, and write content to effectively communicate their ideas and content with their audience.

CC.1.5: Speaking and Listening: Students present appropriately in formal speaking situations, listen critically, and respond intelligently as individuals or in group discussions: Students would be expected to share their project, listen to other student presentations, and then discuss the stories shared after the presentations.

This story connects both the audience that lived in Pine Point as well as the audience who knew nothing about Pine Point’s existence. The platform and presentation style that was used was such a unique way to create a documentary-styled project. The educational value of this story is really amazing. The creators had to research, conduct interviews, collect artifacts, write a script, create a soundtrack, and edit their entire presentation. The audience was able not only to watch and listen to the story but to actively interact with the piece in a way that I have never seen used in documentary making. The age group really could be anyone from high school age through older adults. I teach a video-making course and this content is closely related to that subject area. It wasn’t a true video production, however, it incorporated many elements of video making in its format.

Ohler and Lambert both discuss ways of creating an engaging digital story and the elements that they discuss are clearly used in this story. "Welcome to Pine Point" is a story about a shared place in the lives of the different people interviewed for the piece. It connects different perspectives of Pinepoint and what it meant to the different people in the documentary piece. The piece used different mediums to see and hear the story and included elements of insight and emotion to connect the audience to the story (Lambert). The story touches on what Ohler would call the “heart” of the story and really draws from the emotional realization of what Pine Point meant to the people who lived there while it was a thriving community.

Simple Story Map:

References:

Lambert, J. (2010). Digital Storytelling Cookbook. Center for Digital Story Telling. Open Education Resource.

Ohler, J. (2023). How to make a story - Process notes. Retrieved from: http://storyconcepts.blogspot.com/

Shoebridge, P., Simons, M. (2011). Welcome to pine point. National Film Board of Canada.