Digital Storytelling

I noticed a common thread in two books I’ve been reading – digital storytelling.

The books are not specifically about storytelling, they are both about using the new technologies on the web – blogs, wikis, social networks, etc: web 2.0 as it’s called.  But both of these books refer back to an older tradition – telling a story.  In Mobilizing  Generation 2.0 Ben Rigby quotes author Ursula K. Le Guin as saying:

The story is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind for the purpose of understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.  (p.252)

Rigby is talking about having a people-centric approach to using the new technologies available.  He also makes a good point about a blog should be telling a story and a story needs three critical elements: a hero, a villain, and a catalyst.  It got me thinking about this blog and the story of the STARS program at Woodland Job Corps Center.  The heroes would probably be the students who are honestly trying to make a better life for themselves and break out of the cycle of poverty they are caught in. THe villain would be the environment and past that they carry with them even as they try to escape. The catalyst would be the volunteers who have belief that they can change and are going out of their wayto make that belief visible and real to the students.

I would love to hear back from some of the other volunteers. If you were going to tell the story of STARS using the terms hero, villain, and catalyst would you have the same players in the same roles.

The other treatment of digital storytelling is in the book I mentioned in the post on digital literacy; web 2.0 new tools, new schools pages 43-44. The sidebar discussion was written by David Jakes.

The process of digital storytelling provides a voice rich in multimedia that has the potential to resonate deeply with an audience. As a result, digital storytelling has become one of the most powerful 21st century learning proceses available to teachers and students.

So what exactly is a digital story? A digital story in its truest form is a personal experience represented in a narative format. A script, or the essence of the story, is extracted from the narrative and then amplified by including video, music, still-frame imagery, and the author’s voice. A digital story typically lasts between two and three minutes. The inclusion of multimedia makes the story come alive and takes the story to a place that could not be achieved by writing alone.

The process is rich in learning. Digital storytelling makes students better writers through the multiple rewrites, and script preparation that is required and helps them build essential visual literacy skills through the selection of the images required to construct the story.

What would happen if we combined these two ideas as a project for the STARS student – create a digital story of the STARS program. It would have to start out as a written script and be developed along the story lines of having heros, villains, and catalysts – but we don’t have to be too blunt in the plot development. It should be developed as a collaborative effort and could use a wiki to host the development drafts.  This would encourage creativity, writing, collaboration, and use technology as a supporting tool to enable the learning.