By Gavin Tieng
In a time when a global pandemic has forced educators to design creative solutions to learning at home, UC Santa Barbara Classics associate professor Dorota Dutsch has partnered with the Goleta Valley Library to digitally recreate Greek Myths for children. The recreations are offered to the public virtually each Friday as part of the library’s newest program,“Special Guest Storytime.”
Through the use of slideshows, illustrations, and animations, these digital recreations expose young people to Greek Mythology in a nontraditional way. With the help of a group of talented graduate students, Dutsch hopes these digital recreations will help interest children in Greek Mythology, and occupy them with something educational while they are sheltering in place.
UC Santa Barbara Classics professor Dorota Dutsch
“We hope that more people utilize non-traditional formats like these, when children are stuck at home all day attending classes and learning becomes more difficult,” said Olga Faccani, a graduate student in the Classics department who is working closely with Dutsch on this project.
Olga Faccani is no stranger to Greek Mythology. She has done extensive research on Greek drama and performance, and collaborates with The Odyssey Project, an initiative that immerses incarcerated youth in the world of theatre. Faccani said the team did face challenges while recreating the myths.
“One of the biggest challenges was picking out which myths to recreate. Obviously there is a lot of mythology that is not age appropriate for children—like the myth of Oedipus,” she said.
In order to make accurate recreations of Greek Myths, the team of graduate students had to choose myths that were both relevant and age appropriate, because changing certain aspects of the story was not an option. So far, they have recreated roughly 10 different Greek Myths, including the myth of the goddess Gaia and others.
The digital recreations themselves were created using a mix of PowerPoint slides and voiceover narration. The goal was to use eye-catching imagery accompanied by traditional storytelling to keep children interested in the mythology, and hopefully offer a break from other forms of media consumption. The majority of the narration was done in English, however since Faccani speaks fluent Italian, she also recorded some in Italian.
“I figured that it couldn’t hurt to appeal to some of the Italian-American children who might be watching these,” said Faccani, who also recorded a reading of Pasta di drago, an Italian-story about a tourist who begins aging backwards.
This project is just one example of the many ways that educators are coming up with creative solutions to the limitations of online learning. Both Faccani and the rest of the team working on the Greek Myth project hope that this project opens the door for other educators to follow in their footsteps and embark on similar projects.
The digital recreations are being released on Goleta Valley Library’s online catalog every Friday. The first one was made available late last month.
Gavin Tieng is a third-year Statistics major at UC Santa Barbara. He wrote this article for his Writing Program course Journalism for Web and Social Media.