Our Stories
Our Stories is a joint project involving OLPC, UNICEF, Google, and Story Corps to facilitate children telling their own stories and those of their communities around the world. The basic format will be 3-5 minute audio recordings with geodata, and optional text and images; these will be visualized on maps of the world, and shared publicly over local and global networks.
The Story Corps team are advising on modifications to their recommended process for interviewing a friend or loved one that will work for a young audience of interviewers; the idea is to localize the process and surrounding projects, and to carry out class activities around such interviews in OLPC partner countries. The project hopes to have 1 million stories, and to have a third of all XO owners to have recorded a story, by the end of the first year.
Google engineers are starting to work on the project as of late May, and a draft proposal outlines six initial countries and interface sketches (to be published).
Questions to answer include:
- how to get recording tools to children across the country
- how to develop localized activities around interviewing and recording others, and around reading the stories of others
- how to spread the word; introducing children, parents, and other teachers to the ideas behind the project and ways to upload and share recorded stories; building networks of Our Stories participants and broadcasters; providing posters about the project to telecenters and radio stations