Middle school students in Aurora, Colorado acquired technical skills and personal insight from a summer program for digital storytelling. For the third year, the Job Training in the Arts and Computer Art Lab at the Downtown Aurora Visual Arts center (DAVA) and guest artists from the Denver's Center for Digital storytelling worked with students to create digital photo essays.

Instructors are skilled at bringing out the quiet events in students' lives that they may not immediately recognize as a story. Student's views of their community provided the origin of each photography project. One girl, for instance, chose to profile a neighborhood store. Many students delved into their personal lives.

After editing their collection of photographs, students begin the digital story process by fine-tuning their creative writing skills to develop a "script" that best communicates their personal stories. They each narrate their own story and add digital photographs to create "mini-movies." In a culture where youth are constantly bombarded with messages from television, music, and movies, explains the DAVA site, these youth seized the opportunity to self-produce their own media and broadcast their unique voices and experiences.

Said Josh Schachter, a guest artist from Tucson, Arizona:

It was a real honor to work with the youth at DAVA. They were my eyes and ears -- revealing an Aurora few visitors ever experience. Their images forced me to confront my own expectations and assumptions about youth and inner-city life. They saw rivers in a sea of urban sprawl, unity in the face of isolation and hope amongst uncertainty."

Educators in the Denver area can learn about workshops from the Center for Digital Storytelling.

See DAVA's Digital Stories for student work.

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