Student Interview Guide

This guide helps teachers and students explore the world of personal storytelling through oral history interviews. Classrooms with access to One Laptop per Child (OLPC) computers can use this guide to make the most of their Our Stories™ activities, but teachers and students everywhere are encouraged to learn about interviewing and recording oral histories through this guide.

About Our Stories

What is Our Stories?

It's a new project that encourages people to interview friends, relatives, and others in their community, and to share these oral histories with others. Our four founding partners, UNICEF (www.unicef.org), One Laptop per Child (OLPC) (www.laptop.org), and Google (www.google.com), have come together to help create, share and grow a global collection of personal stories, collected through recorded audio interviews. For classrooms, our initial focus is on providing the technology and tools for students using OLPC laptops to record and share personal story interviews with others.

To learn more about the founding partners, visit the Our Stories Partners page at www.ourstories.org/ourpartners.html.

To learn more about the OLPC program, please visit www.laptop.org.

What's the story behind Our Stories?

The founding partners joined together with a goal of creating a global network of personal storytellers and their listeners.

We aim to gather stories from around the world, because we believe that everyone will discover joy and inspiration in these many and varied voices, words and lives. Our Stories is about your stories.

Can I upload and hear oral history interviews on the Our Stories site?

The first version of the Our Stories site allows visitors to find and hear stories from the Museum of the Person in Brazil, and from Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, and Pakistan, recorded under the auspices of UNICEF. These stories offer compelling portraits of everyday life, recorded by people interviewing each other on topics such as love, war, parenthood, childhood, work, faith, and other themes common to many of us.

Future versions of the Our Stories site will allow students using OLPC laptop computers to share their stories with listeners by adding them to the site. And eventually, we plan to empower many others to share their stories through our site.

Our Stories in the Classroom

What can students learn from personal story interviews?

Everyone has a story to tell about his or her life. By recording and sharing them with the world, students can build a library of memories and experiences that show us how we are each unique, but also similar to each other.

By interviewing family and friends, elders, teachers and other interesting people, students can discover surprising things about people they already know, and about world around them. By preserving and sharing these interviews with the community, they become treasured artifacts that help tell the story of all mankind.

But, for students, the greatest power may be in hearing surprising and moving stories about other people, places, and experiences.

How can teachers work with students on this activity?

It’s never too early to teach the power and joy of true communication. Encourage even the quietest voices to speak up – to ask, and answer questions. Teachers can help students by giving them the opportunity to practice their interview skills, and by assisting in identifying people to interview, topics to discuss, and questions to ask.

Teachers can show their students that listening is an act of love - and an act of learning. It empowers children and gives them a voice through self-expression and participation, one story at a time. Help spread the word!

This guide is designed for students of all ages who are able to ask questions and record answers. For older audiences, we have an Adult Interview Guide, with additional resources, which was adapted from materials created by StoryCorps® (an inspiration for Our Stories), to help people everywhere record and share their stories.

How to Conduct an Interview

1. Choose someone to interview

Find someone in the family or community who might have a great story to tell. Who is your hero? Who tells funny stories? Who do you want to honor by listening?

There are no bad choices. Just make sure that the person being interviewed is comfortable talking about his or her life, and doesn't mind being recorded. The interview subject should understand that the stories may be heard by others and made available for listening online through web sites such as Our Stories. If you ask good questions (see samples below), chances are, you'll get some interesting answers.

Good interview subjects include...

• Family members (parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings)
• Classmates and friends
• Teachers and mentors
• Community leaders, local legends and heroes
• Performers, artists and interesting business people
• Out of town visitors with a unique perspective
  
• A neighbor, a health worker, any person in the community who has something to share

2. Practice interviewing skills

Practicing can help make it easier to interview people; the more practice you have in asking questions (and listening), the more comfortable you'll be when conducting a "real" interview. Here's what you should do to practice for an interview. These same guidelines are useful for real interviews, too.

At the start of the interview:

• Find a quiet place for the interview, where you can talk to the person you're interviewing without a lot of noise of interruption. Indoors is best. A quiet room in a house or apartment, or a quiet corner of a classroom should work just fine. Avoid places where music or a television is on in the background, or where other people are coming and going loudly.
  
  
• Check your recording equipment, no matter whether you're recording on your laptop, with a digital recorder or other device. Turn it on and record yourself and your interview subject saying "testing, testing, 1-2-3" and then playback your recording to make sure everything is working properly, and that you can hear each person clearly, without background noise.
  
  
• Ask permission to record and share the interview from the person being interviewed. Make sure that the person understands that after you record their story, others may be able to hear it. And please be sure they understand that the story may be made available online to listeners through the Our Stories website, or other sites.
  
  
• State important information at the start to "initial" the interview for later reference. This involves recording both people's names (first names are fine for children), ages, and, if relevant (such as for grandparents and grandchildren), their relationship to each other. Also add the current location and the date and year of the interview.
  
  
• Open with small talk to ease the person being interviewed into the conversation. Sometimes just saying, "how are you feeling today?" or, "have you ever been interviewed for you stories before?" can help the storyteller feel more comfortable.
  
  
• Choose a theme or two for your conversation - such as "Funny stories from childhood," or "Stories about my pets." This will make it easier for both you and the storyteller to focus on one topic at a time. When you've chosen your themes, think of questions that will get your interview subject talking, instead of asking questions that can be answered with a a few words or a "yes" or "no" answer. So, for instance, instead of asking, "Did you have any pets when you were a child?" you might say, "Tell me about your first pet."
  
  
• Set a time limit for your interview. It's best to only plan for a 5 or 10 minute story interview. You should be able to cover one theme in this time, and maybe even two. Limiting your time makes it easy to stay focused on storytelling. The number of questions you can ask in this time depends on how much your storyteller likes to talk. So, if the person you're interviewing is telling you a lot after you ask a question, you may not to ask as many questions. If your storyteller gives short answers, you'll need to ask more questions, to get them to tell their story for you. To help you manage your time, use a clock, a watch or another timekeeping device (if you can) so you can try to stay within your time limit. But if the interview is going really well, feel free to add another 5 or 10 minutes to your conversation. Just remember, you won't have an easy way to cut out extra content, so whatever you record will be heard by others just the way it was recorded, without anything edited out or added in later.

During the interview:

• Try not to interrupt or make noise when the person you are interviewing is talk. Let them answer a question for as long as they want before moving on.
• Nod or smile to encourage your interview subject, instead of saying "uh-huh" or other things that might interrupt the conversation.
• Go with the flow by letting the other person take charge of the conversation, and talk about what’s important or interesting or amusing to him or her.
• Avoid "yes or no" answers by asking questions that require more explanation. For instance, "Do you like being a doctor" might lead to a simple "yes" answer. Instead, ask "why did you become a doctor?"
• Abandon your planned questions if the conversation is going in a new direction, but tty to stay with your chosen themes. And try to keep the time limit you set when you started (though you can expand your time if the interview is going very well).
• Ask follow-up questions that are about emotions and feelings, such as “How did that make you feel?”
• Ask for specifics in your questions, such as “What crops was your family growing at the time?” or “What colors did your mother wear most often?” etc.

At the end of the interview:

• End with a "closing" question that helps your interview subject complete his or her story, such as “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about?” or “Is there something I forgot to ask?” etc.
• Thank your interview subject for their time; if you were moved or interested by something they told you, you can feel free share those feelings with them. Just because the interview is over doesn't mean you can't keep talking!

3. Conduct the Interview

Now it's time for some real interviews! Below are sample questions. But it's OK to make up new questions, too. Some of the best questions and answers are surprises, and come up naturally during your conversation.

Suggested questions for interviewing an adult:

• Tell me something about yourself...
• What has life taught you?
• Who and what has surprised you in your life?
• What do you see in your future?
• What are you most proud of?
• What are your regrets?
• Did you have any pets when you were growing up? If so, what were they like?
  
• What was the happiest moment of your life? The saddest? The most memorable?
• What have you always wanted to do, but haven't done yet? Do you think you'll have the chance to do it?
  
• How would you like to be remembered?

• Who are the most important people in your life?
• What's your favorite part of school?
• What is your earliest memory?
  
• Describe the place where you live – what's it like there?
• What are your big goals in life?
• Who's your best friend? What do you like to do together?
• Do you have any siblings? How are they like you and how are they different?
• What do you dream for the children of your country?
• What do want to be later in life and why?
• Describe an ordinary day in your life, from the moment you wake up until the time you go to sleep

Students (or their teachers) should document information about each interview for later reference. This will make it easier to find the interview when it's been added to an online collection like Our Stories. The information should include:

• Important interview details such as your name and the name of the person you interviewed; the date and location where you recorded the interview; and, if it's relevant, what your relationship is to the storyteller (is it your grandmother? your brother? your teacher?) NOTE: please read the next section, which covers situations in which you might not want to record the name of the storyteller.
  
• Key subject matters that were discussed, such as "Life lessons," "How I met your mother," "Pet stories," etc.
• Names of places, people, events or other details discussed in the interview.
• The approximate length of the interview (in minutes). Usually 5 - 10 minutes is all you'll want to record, but keep notes about when you started and when you stopped recording.
  
• An interview file name, so it can be searched for and located later, if it's a digital recording.
• If the interview recorded on an audiotape, label the tape with the name of the interviewer / interviewee and date of interview. Store the tape somewhere safe and dry if possible.
• If the interview was recorded on digital media other than a computer, transfer the recording to a computer (and include the interviewer's name and interview date in the file name). It’s a good idea to save a copy on a CD if possible, or to keep a backup on an external hard drive of you have access to one.

A Safety Reminder

• Make sure your subject knows what you plan to do with the story (in other words, that you're recording it, and that other people may hear it).
  
• Make sure participants know that they don’t need to answer questions that are painful or that may cause them to reveal sensitive information. All stories should be given voluntarily.
  
• If your subject gives any information that may put them or their families or friends at risk, stop the recording and begin the interview over, having them repeat the story without giving those details.
  

• Stories that reveal someone’s HIV/AIDS status.
• Stories that reveal the identity of child soldiers, children in shelters, or children in protective custody.
• Discussions of sexual abuse or exploitation.
• Discussions of someone being charged with or convicted of a crime.
• Strong political statements (if you live in a place where it's dangerous to say those things in public).

Additional Resources

We hope this guide is helpful for students and teachers in exploring the world of oral history and personal storytelling. Below are more resources that can help you discover more about the wonderful ways you can help preserve your stories – as Our Stories.

Visit our website at www.ourstories.org.

For an interview checklist, more suggested for questions and other helpful information, please see the Our Stories Adult Interview Guide at www.ourstories.org/adultguide.html.

Learn even more about how to conduct interviews at StoryCorps' do-it-yourself guide http://www.storycorps.net/record-your-story/cant-come-to-us/diy-guide.