Digital storytelling workshop: Ouarzazate

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I was so busy (and nervous and tired and sick) that I didn’t even think to take any photographs of this wonderful group of teachers.  I borrowed this photo from Sihem, who used it in her digital story.  Notice how intent everyone is on script-writing and image capture.

In the end, there were 13 teachers in the workshop, with Mariejo Deslandes from the French NGO sitting in (and helping me a lot!).  We scrabbled together just enough iPods for everyone, using several family iPods to flesh things out.

Major discoveries:
1.  Five hours is not enough time, especially if there’s no break between workshop sessions for people to gather images.
2.  Working on iPod apps is not as complicated as working with FinalCut, but it’s still plenty complicated, and there are plenty of places for things to go wrong.  More helping hands are really necessary, because people will not remember even simple steps reliably (I don’t, myself) and Things Will Go Wrong.
3.  People–this group in particular–have amazing stories and generous hearts and dedicate themselves impressively to their work and their stories.  Even having visited many of these schools, I had no real idea of what these teachers were facing.

Many thanks to Ahmed, Hassan, Mariejo, Hayat, Hanan, Sokina, Sihem, Noura, Latifa, Mohamed, Lahcen, Ismail, Abderrahman, Youssef, Raja, and Mohamed.  Check out their stories under the “Digital Stories from Morocco” tab.