1. IDEASS Digital Storytelling
Nicole Meñez
ABSTRACT
The Impact Design: Engineering and Sustainability
through Student Service program has established
a class at Natural Bridges High School and Green
Career Center in order to encourage the
exploration of creative narrative through film and
digital media. We are teaching this specifically
within the genre of documentary filmmaking. The
high school students are given documentary film
assignments that correspond to their school and
curriculum as well as local sustainability projects
being produced by IDEASS. Through these
assignments and the collaborative efforts of the
students with both college-level and professional
videographers, we seek to educate the creative
and critical minds of these high school students.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
University of California Santa Cruz, IDEASS, Christopher Renfer, Tamara Ball, Adam Millard-Ball, Linnea
Beckett, Natural Bridges High School and Career Center, Bradley King, Mary Simonis, Jack Baskin School of
Engineering, ASCEND, National Science Foundation, RIcardo Velasco Trujillo
PROJECT GOALS
● Seeks to engage the students of Natural
Bridges high school with the sustainable
practices and innovation going on in their local
community.
● Collaboration with their teacher, a professional
videographer, as well as with a team of UCSC
film students that will be leading the
documentation of the other IDEASS projects
● Teaches critical thinking about media they
produce and media that they are exposed to
● Confidence and creative voice in their student-
produced work
RESULTS
Throughout this academic course, the high school
students have been interviewed by a member of the
project and documented through audio recordings.
These recordings are then archived on the online
application SoundCloud. These interviews have
involved the students expressing their involvement
with Digital Storytelling, their experiences with
sustainability as well as Science, Technology,
Engineering, or Math, and their learning in and outside
the classroom. These interviews will be taken and
analyzed for the knowledge and language of
sustainability and STEM that the students express
and how that changes over the course of the
academic year.
IDEASS
⟱
Digital Storytelling
⇙ ⇘
Natural UCSC FIlm
Bridges ↙
⇣ ⤷ Film Class
⇣
SoundCloud
Interviews