Thing 20 – Digital Storytelling

Purpose

To explore different ways to tell stories on the web.

Background

Whether telling the story about growing up or a trip or an historical journey or fictional story, everyone has a story to tell.  In his book, A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink explains the importance of story. 

• “Story exists where high concept and high touch intersect.  Story is high concept because it sharpens our understanding of one thing by showing it in the context of something else.
• “An organization’s knowledge, is contained in its stories.”
• “We are our stories.  We compress years of experience, thought, and emotion into a few compact narratives that we convey to others and tell to ourselves...story represents a pathway to understanding that doesn’t run through the left side of the brain.”

Discovery Activity

Explore the range of digital story telling resources on the web.

Digital Storytelling resources: http://newtoolsworkshop.wikispaces.com/Digital+storytelli

50+ Ways to Tell a Story: http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/50+Ways

Read more from the Center on Digital Story Telling: http://www.storycenter.org/index1.html

Story Telling:  http://www.teachingteachers.com/story.htm

People Tell Their Stories in the Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/folklife/

Blog Post: “Thing 20, Digital StoryTelling”:   

Find at least five digital stories that can be used in school, link to them, and then write about how they can be used in your classroom.