virtualDavis

Telling stories is as old as the hills, as human as compassion and love, as necessary as air, sleep and chocolate. Fast forward to the digital age! Storytellers are inheriting more magical tools and techniques every day. Sounds, still and moving visuals, interaction, sharing, accessibility… This is the world of digital storytelling. Love it or hate it, it’s here to stay! (Amplicate.com)

What’s your opinion on Digital Storytelling?

Are you familiar with Amplicate.com? It’s new to me. Always more fun to experiment than stand on the sidelines and watch, right? So I dove in! According to the mission statement on their homepage, “Amplicate collects similar opinions in one place; making them more likely to be found by people and companies.” Hmmm… Not so sure about companies, but there may be a few people out there who want to weigh in on the merits and demerits of digital storytelling. Do you think digital storytelling rocks? Or do you think digital storytelling sucks?

Image and quotation via tech4k12.blogspot.com

Digital Storytelling is the modern way to tell a story. Any story.  Storytelling is a practice that has been around for as long as man has been talking.

There are several resources available for teachers to include digital story telling in their instruction.  Microsoft has recently published the Digital Storytelling E-Book, and have also created some guides to get teachers started with Windows Live Movie Maker, and Photo Story 3, both free downloads from Windows Live.

In October, 2007 educator Alan Levine evaluated 50+ on-line tools that you can use to create your own web-based story. He used each tool to create the same story so you can evaluate the differences yourself. See all the results at his wiki http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools

“Fears grow over oil spill disaster” (Video via youtube.com)

Is this the understatement of the year: “These guys [BP] don’t have a great record in taking care of people’s health and safety.” This comment, made by Greenpeace’s Mark Floegel about BP’s insistence that shrimpers, fishermen, etc. who wish to assist in the clean up effort must first sign a BP indemnification waiver. (Note, this quotation comes at about 2:20 in the video.)

Google is leveraging its multimodal muscle via the Crisis Response pageto help cover the oil spill, aggregating timely content and publishing updated Google Earth layers to help visualize the scope, evolution and impact of the spill.

“Google is taking a major (though low-profile) step into the realm of crowd sourcing news. Users can upload their videos of the spill or news related to the Gulf oil spill, and the videos are published to a YouTube playlist, making a video record of the disaster and what is being done on the ground to stop it.” (Mother Nature Network)

Perhaps this is the silver lining? Citizens around the world are quickly learning to contribute to the story, create history as it’s made, participate in the global dialogue that until recently was interpreted and disseminated by a few. Citizen journalism is open journalism! This shift is exciting and inspiring. The democratization of information, of news, of history. Can open government be far behind?!?!

Back in 1997 an in-depth feature on digital storytelling ran on SFGate.com (home of the San Francisco Chronicle), and it’s still referenced today because it offers such a comprehensive, almost encyclopedic introduction to digital storytelling. If the concept is new to you, this is a great place to start.

So what’s a digital storyteller? They are artists/writers using new tools and techniques, like HTML hyper-text linking for the web, animation programming in Macromedia DirectorPremiere, to tell their stories, and digital movie-making using Adobe.

These tools, and many others, are helping or perhaps even forcing writers and artists to think outside the realm of traditional linear narrative. Every aspect of storytelling; structure, plot, character, pace, voice, timing, and setting, has the potential to be morphed by digital contact.

Many of the new technologies, emergent themes and innovative projects are worth examining as a way to understand the current and constantly evolving state of digital storytelling.

Read the full article at sfgate.com

Although this already sounds a little dated (we’re already a full decade into the new millennium after all), it’s a basic, clear and helpful digital storytelling primer. You’ll find lots of great links to resources to accelerate your learning curve.

Perhaps the most important information comes in the first paragraph, a reminder that remains relevant today:

“If you don’t have a good story to tell you might as well save yourself the expensive digital bells and whistles and go back to your writing table. Content is still, thankfully, king.“

Over the last dozen years, the tools available to the digital storyteller have increased dramatically. It seems like every day there’s a new online resource to facilitate digital storytelling. It’s easy to get swept up in the razzle-dazzle, but strong narrative fundamentals are a prerequisite. A fancy mixer, oven and baking tin won’t create a delicious cake without the right ingredients. And a talented cook!

Writer Kris Spisak weighs in on vooks:

This concern, that digital storytelling in general and vooks in particular may compromise our ability or will to imagine, continues to pop up. I’ve explained that the sort of digital storytelling worth aspiring to should accomplish the opposite; it should fire the imagination and inspire readers/viewers to become active participants in, contributors to and sharers of the stories…

Read the full post at The Overflowing Bbookshelf.

The Center for Digital Storytelling is “dedicated to assisting people in using digital media to tell meaningful stories from their lives…” Central to their mission “is an enduring respect for the power of individual voices and a deep set of values and principles that recognize how sharing and bearing witness to stories can lead to learning, action, and positive change.” This is one of the progeny of Dana Atchley’s work in digital storytelling.

Storybird Quick Tour from Storybird on Vimeo.

Take a tour of Storybird

Attention parents, babysitters and elementary school teachers. Have you discovered the Storybirds website yet? Storybirds are short, visual stories that you make with family and friends to share digitally. And soon you’ll be able to print them as well. Neat! The perfect place to start: Timothy, the Existential Bear…

Michael Arrington’s recent TechCrunch post about old media “guys” who don’t get it made me realize how far things have come — and how much better they’ve gotten — in the world of journalism.

The Way Things Were (Wrong)

Why, for example, could we could lift from other sources without offering attribution? I remember when a librarian at ABC News taught us how to use news databases to find stories from local media that could serve as grist for our mill. On another occasion, I pretty much re-reported a Japanese magazine’s story for Newsweek. The Japanese magazine’s editor called me out privately, but I never paid any further price…

The Equation Is Changed

I remember… the first real-time chat between people in China and a major news website… the experience was raw, unfiltered and direct from the source — without any correspondent to tell us what was being said. The unlimited space, flexibility of time, and ability to bring others into the conversation broke down the barriers that the journalist can place, even inadvertently, between those involved in the news and those interested in it…

Change for the Good

Access to information has, obviously, improved as well. Search engines such as Google and myriad other information sources, from Twitter and Facebook to Digg and Delicious, have made it easier to be sure we don’t miss what’s relevant. They can also enable us to find serendipitous links that take us on new journeys. Sure, there’s still proprietary information locked up in Factiva, Nexis and Bloomberg terminals, but you’d be hard-pressed to convince me we have less access to good information today than we did before the web.

Accountable advertising

Today, in digital media, advertisers can at least tell if their ads have been served to (and presumably seen by) a viewer…

Read the full post at pbs.org

Hat tip to Dorian Benkoil at MediaShift for this insightful post about the merits of new media (despite his preference to stop calling it that.) These highlights gloss some of his insightful examples, so you’ll want to read the full post over at PBS.org. I’m especially drawn by his emphasis on attribution/transparency and the idea that it’s become so much easier for real people to share their unfiltered experience in real time. Less clear to me is his assertion that, “Journalists are also now held to a higher standard, and have to be more transparent.” I hope this is true, but I’m not always as confident as he is. Do you agree that today’s journalists are obliged to be more transparent and distort information less than in the past?

Ask people who have been there, and they’ll all tell you India is like no other place in the world, a land that stirs every one of the five senses and stays in your heart forever. It is this India that brought together three friends, Waris Ahluwalia, Mortimer Singer and Tina Bhojwani to raise funds, spirits, and awareness for the victims of the attacks in Mumbai in November, 2008.

The editors set out to create a scrapbook-collecting personal photos, stories, and memories from people who, like themselves, love India. The contributors include Wes Anderson, Adrien Brody, Francesco Clemente, Anthony Edwards, Jeanine Lobell, Natalie Portman, Yves Carcelle, Jean Touitou, Owen Wilson, Laura Wilson, Cynthia Rowley, James Ivory, Matthew Williamson, Rachel Roy, Tory Burch, Padma Lakshmi, Shobhaa De, Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani. This book declares to Mumbai and the whole country that we are all thinking of them and support them: hence To India, with Love: New York to Mumbai. Profits from the sales of the book will go to support families affected by the attacks. This book can truly make a difference, by opening eyes to the wonders of India and by once again letting the pen-or a camera-dominate the sword.

via mumbaiwegotyourback.com

Bravo, Tina Bhojwani! This is an exciting accomplishment and a creative twist on humanitarian philanthropy. I’ve ordered To India with Love, and I can’t wait for it to show up in the mail. I hope all you Indiaphiles will consider purchasing this dazzling publication and spreading the word to your friends. More once I’ve had a chance to meander through the colorful pages…