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?!?!