Map your family

In this storytelling activity we will work with Joseph Erb to make connections between our personal stories and the places which are the locations of important events that shaped our worldviews. Joseph will explain the 5 beats framework for Indigenous storytelling and how it grounds our stories in the landscape and our cultures, focusing on the larger setting in which the story occurs. We will pay attention to these connections as we create a Google Earth Web map to help us tell the multigenerational story of our families and how those stories inform the way each of us approaches science.

The prompts below are to help you consider what to include in your story, but you do not need to address all of them. As you construct your map, pay attention to the way in which you view the landscape and how you move through and between places. Think about walking the land while telling your story, with each part of the story being told in a different location.

REMEMBER: do not add any personal information (home addresses, etc.) to a map or project that will be shared publicly.


Create Your Story

Today's guest speaker is Joseph Erb, MFA, Assistant Professor of Digital Storytelling, University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a computer animator, film producer, educator, language technologist and artist enrolled in the Cherokee Nation. He earned his MFA degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Erb created the first Cherokee animation in the Cherokee language, “The Beginning They Told”. He created the first computer-animated film and the first planetarium show in a Native American language, and has led major projects—working closely with technicians and executives at Apple and later Google, Facebook and Microsoft—to embed the Cherokee syllabary on the iPhone, iPad, and social media sites as well as Gmail and the search engine Google. He liases regularly with programmers, systems engineers and executives at these companies, as well as a wide range of other organizations including tribal nations, the National Park Service, and the Unicode Consortium.

For this activity, each participant will use the Jamboard to develop a story using the 5 beats method of Indigenous storytelling. Make sure that your story is based on places so that we can use it in our next class where we will map our stories using Google Earth Web.

Indigenous Storytelling* has been characterized as having 5 beats:

Beat one:  Set up the theme or the journey you are going on, and what land and cultural framework you will use in the story

Beat two: Introduce the main character(s) or community

Beat three: The journey/crisis of the main character(s) or community

Beat four: The resolution of the crisis of the main character(s) or community

Beat five: The message and resolution of the theme where the character and land are once again in balance with one another

*Clague, Pauline. "The five beats of Indigenous Storytelling." Lumina: Australian Journal of Screen Arts and Business 11 (2013). You can read the article and a discussion CLICK HERE

JosephNWVW2022compressed.mp4

This is the Zoom recording of Joseph Erb's presentation from 2022

Storytelling Activity

Use the prompts below as examples of things you can include in your story. Begin to organize the story of your family's relationship to land using the 5 beats method as illustrated by Joseph Erb's Cherokee Water Story. You will have access to one of the Jamboards which will help you to organize your thoughts, and then you will work in small groups in breakout rooms to polish your stories.

DO NOT put anything personal like home addresses on the Jamboard or your map because these will be public.

You will need to sign into a Google Account in order to add photos to the Jamboard. If you don't have a Google account you can sign up here

Sign in/sign up for Google Account

Assigned Reading

5-beats-2.pdf

Prompts for Storytelling Map

What factors go into shaping an individual worldview?

First is family and local culture

What are the nonhuman influences in your life?

Spiritual Elements and beliefs help shape your thinking

How has the pandemic changed the way you relate to nature and your special places?

Create Your Map

Google Earth Web Views

Before we begin building our map we will learn how to find the view that we want and set it so that we automatically move to the angle, height, and view type you want. This is important for the way we tell our story, because we want to immerse our audience in the experience of visiting our important places.

Go to the search box and type in the name of a place that is very important to you. Use the navigation tools and Pegman/Street view to explore your place. When you build your map you will pay attention to the view for each location.

We will share our screens and tell our fellow students about our special places.

Sign in/sign up for Google Account

Copy of Google Earth Web Storytelling

We will now use the prompts below to build our storytelling map using Google earth Web.

The advantages of using Google Earth Web for Storytelling are: