Digital Storytelling Introductory Post

            School (EWU) started up again last week, and this post heralds the start of Digital Storytelling, a class that already looks to be both interesting and pertinent to today’s media requirements. I say this because it’s the second week in and I’ve been dragged kicking and screaming to the computer in order to set up a twitter account, as well as to brush off this lovely blog and start typing again. This first post is the opening to using multiple digital mediums in order to tell personal and historical stories.

            This week’s reading included Digital Storytelling from Wikipedia, The Value of DigitalStorytelling for the Small Museum, Stony Brook University’s DigitalStorytelling, various projects using the Curatescape platform, Two Must-See Digital Storytelling Projects from Mashable, and Four Inspiring Examples ofDigital Storytelling from Mashable.  Wikipedia’s page on Digital Storytelling gives a broad explanation and various uses in schools, museums and libraries, doing a fairly decent job though you should keep in mind it is Wikipedia and should not be taken as hard fact.  One of the better items on the page is the extensive (for Wikipedia) notes and references section and the external links list.  Another plus to this page is it brings in enterprises using Digital Storytelling outside of the United States.

            In The Value of Digital Storytelling for the Small Museum the author expounds on the pros and cons of using digital media in a museum, and how taking digital media classes has changed the way she works.  An easy read that gives the point of view of someone who actually has firsthand experience with the changeover from typical historical mediums.

            Stony Brook University’s page on Digital Storytelling does a really good job on explaining the subject and gives the seven elements of this technique.  Easy to navigate and understand, this site provides information on useful tools, copyright issues, and steps to create your own digital story.

Stony Brook University Digital Storytelling page.

            There are many projects that use the Curatescape platform to tell their stories, and this site gives a list of 18 various public projects. The Indy Historical, Raleigh Historical and Northwest Pennsylvania links take you to websites that aren’t active yet and provide no real information, though they do give you opportunities to donate.  

           

Bear 71 screenshot. Courtesy of blog 2 must-see digital storytelling projects

The two ‘must-see’ Digital Storytelling Projects from Mashable are Bear 71 and Welcome to Pine Point. Bear 71 is an interactive website/documentary that allows the user to see the interactions between man and nature. Interesting concept, but there wasn’t a lot of guidance for the user and the background music/sounds got annoying. Welcome to Pine Point introduces visitors to the no-longer-in-existence town of Pine Point, and the people who lived there and still reminisce about it.  The format was innovative in a yearbook kind of way, though sometimes the images would cover up the text.  There were lots of pictures, videos and sounds clips, though they would protrude over each other, and were a lot to take in.

            The Mashable list of four examples of Digital Storytelling were Bear 71, Pandemic, Welcome to Pine Point and Rome.  Pandemic was confusing because it was a real time interactive social experiment that is no longer active and so the website was kind of dead.  The link to Rome takes you nowhere, which is disappointing because the description provided sounded very interesting: “a multiplatform interactive narrative experience inspired by the music of Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi (featuring Jack White, Norah Jones and renowned composer Ennio Morricone’s original 40-piece orchestra from Italy).”