Friendships emerge, are set to endure at Digital Storytelling Summit
UND CONNECT event teaches high school students how to create responsible, professional-quality digital content
Participation was up, writing and video educational opportunities increased, and there may or may not have been an overnight Mario Kart tournament at the second installment of the UND Digital Storytelling Summit.
The Summit was held from June 2 through June 6, and this year, all participants were able to stay in a UND residence hall (which may have helped facilitate the alleged late-night video game tournament).
The Summit is a way for high school students across the state (and across the Red River) to learn how to engage with their communities in a digital format, by learning about different styles of writing and how to film and edit videos.
The goal? To create usable promotional products – a written piece and a video piece – that clients at UND and in the Grand Forks community can use online or in their businesses. To do that, the students learn through field trips, lectures and hands-on opportunities how to responsibly tell engaging and useful stories.
“The camp was extremely successful,” said Emily Gibbens-Buteau, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and one of the event’s organizers, along with Joonghwa Lee, chair of the department.
“The students have not only learned a lot of skills in video editing and writing, but also built their network and made friendships, and I think they recognize that that’s almost the most important thing they’re taking from this camp.”
That sentiment of friendship was evident on Friday, June 11, in the Henry Family Ballroom, where the students gathered to present to family members and friends the finished products for their clients.
This year, those clients included Abigail’s Book & Gift Shop in Grand Forks, Greater Grand Forks Young Professionals, Northern Plains UAS Test Site and the UND departments of Biology and Chemistry.
At the event, each of the student groups took to the stage to show the videos they created and digitally display their feature stories.
Cayley Stansbery, of Sheldon, N.D., who worked on writing a feature story about the test site, said she wanted to focus on the positive things that uncrewed aircraft systems can accomplish. She also said she enjoyed working with her “wonderful teammates.”
“I just had a blast, it was amazing,” she said, microphone in hand.
Grand Forks native Caitlyn May-Ley, who also attended the inaugural installment of the summit, said she enjoyed returning to campus because the faculty organizers and UND student Media Coordinators put in the effort to make the summit both fun and useful.
“This week, I had the opportunity to befriend a colorful group of future UND students, journalists and leaders,” she said. “It was an incredible opportunity to connect with professors and student interns as well.”
This year, a total of 16 students attended the event, up from 12 last year, with five coming from Grand Forks, one each from the North Dakota communities of Dickinson, Drayton, Hazen, Hillsboro, Page, Sheldon, Starkweather, Walhalla and Watford City, and one each from East Grand Forks and Willmar in Minnesota.
Students took a field trip to the WDAY-TV studio in Fargo for background info on broadcast and video skills. They also attended lectures on topics including news and feature writing, video editing and multimedia storytelling, among others.
New to the summit this year is a way for attendees to stay in touch. Gibbens-Buteau said students each created a LinkedIn profile and then joined the newly created Digital Storytelling Summit Alumni Network.
“If anyone has any updates to share, if anyone’s coming to UND and has questions, anything like that, we encourage them to post into our LinkedIn group, and we can all stay in touch with each other, because we really don’t want to lose these connections,” she said.
The summit closed with the students being called again to the stage to receive a certificate of completion, plus handshakes from Lee and Gibbens-Buteau. The event also gave parents and family members the chance to snap a quick photo to commemorate their loved one’s achievement.
The Digital Storytelling Summit is supported by the UND Connect program, which teams faculty members and students to work on community-focused projects aimed at making life better for North Dakotans. UND Connect is funded through the North Dakota Economic Diversification Research Grant Fund.
Like in its inaugural year, the Summit was also supported by the North Dakota Newspaper Association Education Foundation.
According to the Foundation’s website, the organization’s goal is “To provide the advancement of journalism education, study, research and development through financial assistance, internships, fellowships, lectureships and other means to enhance the newspaper profession in North Dakota.”
NDNA Executive Director Cecile Wehrman personally lent a hand at the Summit by leading a session that reviewed the students’ feature articles.
