As part of the process of redesigning this Aberth Digital Storytelling blog, I decided to look again at the links from the point of view of listing some of the digital storytelling people and projects who’ve influenced me over the years. Here’s the first draft. I know I’ve left many people off this list. If there’s someone from the field of digital storytelling you’d like me to consider adding, please use the Comments system to let me know. Akiko Ogawa, Alec Couros, Angharad Dalton, Barrie Stephenson, BBC Capture Wales (archive) , BBC Cipolwg ar Gymru (archif), Bernajean Porter, Breaking Barriers , Cadwyd, Cardiff Story, Carwyn Evans, Communities 2.0 , Culture…
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Six steps to a sustainable digital storytelling project
If you’re planning a digital storytelling project, and you want it to be a sustainable one, here are six steps to consider: 1. write an outline of the ethos your project will employ, encompassing: * fair dealing with contributors and participants, * contracting, * intellectual property and third-party rights, * licensing-on the products your participants make, * capturing and storing consents by parents/guardians/carers of minors and vulnerable people, * diversity policy * disclosure policy * how to keep participants’ personal data safe, * etc. 2. write a summary of all your storyteller recruitment methods. The difficulty of this isn’t to be underestimated, as this was an element that turned out…
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Digital Storytelling Wizard of 2010
One of the things I enjoy about Twitter is that it enables people with shared interests to meet up. During 2010, I’ve met several people who are passionate about digital storytelling just because I talk about the subject on Twitter. One of the most inspiring people I met this year was Jordanian researcher Rami Malkawi @RamiDST. He’s studying for his PhD at University of Glamorgan, Wales, under the auspices of Phil Davies – @PhilWales – who’s probably already a familiar name if you’re interested in digital storytelling in education. When I met Rami in October at the BBC canteen in Cardiff, he talked me through his plans. He’s testing a…
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Fun end-of-term digital storytelling activity
If you’re a teacher looking for something fun for the end of school term, this may be of interest. It’s a hand-drawn, very basic animation, storytelling form I’ve been experimenting with since 2003. The first one I made was called Tickling in response to a call for stories by BBC One Minute Movies. If you’d like to make your own, here are my instructions. Let me know how you get along. Written and first published by Gareth Morlais on 8 December 2010.
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StoryBank, Cancer Genetics, StoryWorks and old friends
Thanksgiving Day (USA) was also the day of the launch of StoryBank Cancer Genetics digital stories at the University of Glamorgan’s Atrium building in Cardiff, Wales. It was a fantastic event. First Minister Carwyn Jones AM, who formally launched StoryBank, told a moving story about a serviceman posted home who discovered from military records that he’d been sent home because his mother had cancer and wasn’t expected to live very long. Carwyn said: “That man was my father”. What a way to discover such bad news.The health professionals who spoke from the stage said stories are a much better way than pamphlets to: persuade people with a significant history of…
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Digital stories in the Kwak’wala language
Only 270 people can speak Kwak’wala (source) so it’s highly endangered. Digital storytelling has a vital role in keeping a record of languages as they’re spoken today. The Mayatlan’s Wila Culture and Language Group for their Kwak’wala Digital Language Project has won Canadian Government funding to create 20 digital stories in the Kwak’wala language that will reflect daily activities, such as family meal times and home routines, as well as traditional events like food gathering… Capturing a language in this way in itself is not enough; digital storytelling needs to be just one piece of the jigsaw pieces that make a language relevant and vibrant. I do wish the speakers…
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Digital stories containing home movies
Here are some links to digital stories shown on the BBC website which contain home movies, archive film and especially-shot video – i.e. not just stills To Know Someone by Canadian student Nicole Lavergne Smith mixes home movie footage of her grandmother as a young woman with Nicole’s story of her grandmother’s dementia today. Another effective, albeit brief, use of home movie in a digital story by Gill Jones from the Breaking Barriers project. This Rhondda Lives! story by Les Rees is remarkable for its use of 1926 carnival archive footage from the National Library of Wales. Les was actually at this carnival and remembers it well. Here’s a seldom-screened…
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Jason Ohler’s new book
The author of the classic ‘Digital Storytelling in the Classroom’ has finished writing his latest book. On 31st October 2010, Corwin Press will publish Digital Community, Digital Citizen by Jason Ohler: “It looks at the rise of digital communities, the evolution of citizenship (local, global and digital), the complications (and opportunities) arising from kids communicating in cyberspace and how education can help prepare students for a world that will need them to use technology effectively, creatively and wisely. Topics addressed: character education for digital kids, how school boards need to respond to everything from sexting to cyberbullying, how to help teachers and students ‘see’ the technology that has become invisible…
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Use social media to drive social change: The Dragonfly Effect
This looks like an interesting book: ‘The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change’ by Jennifer Aaker & Andy Smith “A handbook on using the power and popularity of social media to do good in the world. The Dragonfly Effect because of that insect’s ability to move in any direction when its four wings work together. This is a comprehensive guide for how to take your cause and compassion viral: an e-mail campaign to register bone marrow donors for hard-to-match patients a Colombian engineer who used Facebook to organize a protest against the Revolutionary Armed Forces the microlending site Kiva” (edited from…
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Animating StoryCorps interview
“The things we all share are pretty much the things that bring us together”. That’s how Jamillah Knowles began her piece about StoryCorps. I was listening to the BBC Outriders technology podcast this week and really enjoyed the StoryCorps interview. The programme’s presenter Jamillah talked with Mike Rauch, who’s making animations of some of these audio stories. I don’t know whether or not this podcast is downloadable outside the UK, but here’s a link to the 12 MB mp3 file of this episode. The story by Danny and Annie at the start of the sequence was really moving, especially when I heard that Danny had passed away since recording his…