This introduces educators to digital storytelling. The first third is class DS, including its history. The second looks into DS through new forms, such as social media and gaming. Part 3 outlines key features of DS for education.

1. Digital
storytelling
for
education in
the 21st
century

2. Table of contents
1.Storytelling
2.Classic digital storytelling
3.Newer forms (since 2004)
4.For education

3. But wait, what's storytelling?

4. The Freytag:

5. Or
the
personal?
• Delight and instruct

6. Stories are:
• About
someone
important
• About an
important
event
• About
what one
does?
From the CDS Cookbook
http://www.storycenter.org/cookbook.html

7. A certain
kind of
personal
experience

8. How much is mystery?
The last man on Earth sat alone
in a room.

9. How much is mystery?
The last man on Earth sat alone
in a room.
There was a knock on the door.
(Fredric Brown, “Knock”, 1948)

10. Mystery?
It was a bright cold day
in April, and the clocks
were striking thirteen.

11. Last night, I
dreamt I went to
Manderley again.

12. As Gregor Samsa
awoke one morning
from uneasy dreams
he found himself
transformed in his
bed into a gigantic
insect.

15. What isn’t
storytelling?

17. A list definition
For a given audience, a
story is a sequence of
content, anchored on a
problem, which engages
that audience with
emotion and meaning.

18. 2. Digital storytelling
In the 1990s
Web 1.0 storytelling
• Hypertext
• Multimedia
• Browser-focused
• Connected with
offline, analog
content
(textbooks)
• Evanescent

19. Web 1.0 era storytelling
Email chain
letters, jokes
• Social
• Boundaries
fuzzy
• Microcontent
• Virtual
community
facilitation
(1980s on)(Snopes.com)

20. Web 1.0 storytelling
Example:
Dreaming
Methods
(2000ff)
http://www.dre
amingmetho
ds.com/

21. http://pinepoint.nfb.ca/

22. NYTimes, Snowfall

23. Example: “Ted’s Caving Journal” (circa 2001)
(one copy, from http://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/page1.html)

24. Features:
• Multilinear
• Multimedia
• Browserish
• Serial
structure

25. Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a
transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has
had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion
dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most
profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my
replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may
know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in
the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency…

26. The Digital Storytelling Curriculum

27. Digital storytelling roots
Effective:
• Storytelling, not
technology per
se
• Personal
connectionDigital Storytelling
at Ukaiah, 2006

28. Digital storytelling roots
NITLE variant:
• Non-personal
narratives
• Campus focus

29. Educational projects growing
• Community
• Curricula
• Support
(http://connect.educause.edu/Library/Abstract/StorytellingintheAgeofthe/42327)

33. New
forms
for
stories

34. Republish
content via
blog
• Pedagogy
• Social
feedback
• Publicity
• Pepys Diary
• Dracula
Blogged
• Ulysses and
da Vinci per
day http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/disunion/

38. Bookblogging
Extended
networks
• Support wikis
(example:
Pynchon)
• William
Gibson lost
his Node

48. All over the Web
• http://www.pepysdiary.com/
• http://smalltownnoir.com/
• http://newdigitalstorytelling.net/2011
/05/15/storytelling-by-twitter-three-
line-novels/
• http://www.facebook.com/zytomirski

49. Wikistorytelling
(http://www.amillionpenguins.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)

50. Can a collective create a believable
fictional voice? How does a plot find
any sort of coherent trajectory when
different people have a different idea
about how a story should end – or
even begin? And, perhaps most
importantly, can writers really leave
their egos at the door?
“About”,
http://www.amillionpenguins.com/wiki/index.php/About

52. Embedded within Slideshare Web platform apparatus

53. Embedded within blog

54. Storytelling by
podcast
The Yellow Sheet, by
Librivox team (2007)
• Text then podcast
• http://librivox.org/the
-yellow-sheet-by-
librivox-volunteers/
• More: Podiobooks,
http://www.podioboo
ks.com/

55. Flickr and storytelling
Tell a
story in 5
frames
group
“The Chase”
(Benjamin!, 2009)

61. Remixing
Example:
"Farm to
Food", Eli
the Bearded
(2008)

63. Social photo stories

64. Social photo stories

65. Social photo stories
Flickr, Tell A Story in Five Frames group
(http://www.flickr.com/groups/visualstory/)
Example: "Food to
Farm", Eli the
Bearded (2008)

66. Social photo stories
Example: "Food to
Farm", Eli the
Bearded (2008)

67. http://50ways.wikispaces.com/

70. Gaming as part of mainstream culture
• Median age of gamers shoots past 30
• Industry size comparable to music
• Impacts on hardware, software, interfaces,
other industries
• Large and growing diversity of platforms,
topics, genres, niches, players

74. Interactive fiction

78. Synthesis

80. 3. DS and education
• Instructors creating learning
content in story form
• Students making stories
• Anyone making campus stories

81. Faculty and campus stories
• Good route to multimedia
• Connect w/net.gen
• Unusual approach to
content creation
• Autobiographical option

82. Student stories
• Constructivist pedagogy
• Rethinking material
• Discover/develop voice
• Information and digital literacy
• Potential job market benefit

83. Assignments

84. Assignment example
“Educational Portrait & Presentation
In order to successfully complete college level courses,
one should be able to identify how one learns and
processes information. The assignment will be created as
a digital story and should be between 2 and 4 minutes
long. The assignment may be uploaded on-line to the
Blackboard assignment area.
Tutorials on using Photo Story 3 to complete the
assignment will be given in class [students may use other
digital audio/visual or movie making software (such as
Windows Movie Maker or iMovie) as long as it can be
saved in a video format compatible with Windows OS]. ”

85. Assignment example
“Develop a portrait of yourself as a learner. Include
answers to the following in the project:
a. What is the most important “thing” you’ve
learned?
b. How do you recall learning the “thing”? Describe
how you remembered learning it.
c. Pick a mode of learning described in this class and
discuss how it relates to the most important thing.
d. What does learning mean to you?
Students will be presenting their completed portraits
to the class during designated times. “
Virginia Coleman, Mercy College

86. Assessment rubrics

87. Assessment rubrics

89. http://bryanalexander.org
bryan.alexander@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/bryanalexander