Share thisAbout Digital Stories
About Digital Stories from the BBC Wales Digital Stories page: Digital Stories are short, personal, multimedia scraps of TV that people can make for themselves. They’re ‘mini-movies’. Desktop computers enabled with video editing software are used to synchronise recorded spoken narratives with scans of personal photographs… There’s a strictness to the construction of a Digital Story: 250 words, a dozen or so pictures, and two minutes is the right length. As with poetry these constraints define the form (e.g. a haiku is a poem written using 17 syllables, and the 14 lines of a sonnet are written in iambic pentameter) and it’s the observation of that form which gives the thing its elegance. Daniel Meadows, Lecturer in Participatory Media & Photography Cardiff University School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies and former Creative Director of BBC Wales Digital Storytelling.
Beyond Conventions...
Of course, there are many types of digitally created narratives out there that do not stick exactly to these conventions. While I think it is important to value the general codes and conventions of the 'digistory' as it develops as a recognisable and distinct form of narrative, studies of digital storytelling for me have inevitably bled into an exploration of other multimedia and even hypertext narratives.One outstanding multimedia resource that is available to study in depth in the classroom is the Inanimate Alice series.
The makers describe Inanimate Alice on their Facebook page as:
...a multimedia, interactive narrative following the life of Alice, a developing video game designer. Through text, sound, images, music and games,the story of Alice unfolds, beginning in a remote area of China when Alice is eight years old. Each of the ten episodes become increasingly interactive and game-like, reflecting Alice's own developing skills as a game designer and animator.
[It is] an interactive narrative in ten episodes. Offering educators free teaching modules, educators have been using Inanimate Alice to teach literacy, language development, culture and more.
There is also a range of terrific fully-fledged hypertext narratives out there - these take the digital one step further, making the path of the story interactive as well. The audience clicks through to different part of the story, often in a non-linear way, using various kinds of hyperlinking. Eastgate Systems Inc. publish a range of high quality pieces of hypertext fiction, one of which (Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson) was on the list of Prescribed Texts for the NSW HSC English course in 2000-2003.
Watch Digistories
QUT Creative Industries
Creative Industries Faculty researchers adapt Digital Storytelling to a variety of contexts and purposes including education, poverty reduction, public history, and youth engagement.
BBC Wales:
Watch inspiring digistories from the BBC Wales Capture Wales project, or from the School Shoe Box series (BBC resources are sometimes not viewable in Australia).DigiTales:
Video clips from DigiTales Sydney:“In February 2008, a group of young media leaders were trained in the art of digital storytelling by award-winning UK organisation Hi8us who started the DigiTales project in 2006. Following one week of intensive training, these media makers were then supported to train other young people from Western Sydney to make short films about their lives.”
Other Digital Fiction:
Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2: http://collection.eliterature.org/2/index.htmltwo five three (interactive novel): http://www.ryman-novel.com/
Telescopic text (hypertext): http://www.telescopictext.com/
Shopping List (hypertext): http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/hw/groceries/
Inanimate Alice (digital novel): inanimatealice.com
Alice in Australia: Make Digital Stories
These are the slides from a presentation I gave at an ETAQ seminar in 2012:
http://www.slideshare.net/kellimcgraw/alice-in-australia-digital-storytelling
Make Digistories
Introduction to digital narratives - video by Julie Bain:
From the EQ Library learning community:
Alternative methods for story making:
One alternative to using computer software such as MovieMaker or iMovie to make a digistory, is to use an online tool such as Voicethread.Download the storymaking tool made by the creators of Inanimate Alice, 'Snappy': http://www.inanimatealice.edu.au/
Further information, tutorials and assessment:
- Alan Levine’s 50+ Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story - his 50 Ways to Tell The Dominoe Story illustrates what the same story looks when told using different Web 2.0 tools (he is now up to 63 tools).
- The Center for Digital Storytelling in California. Some great teaching resources and digital stories to show your class.
- The Digital Narrative site by Lightening Bug - great introduction to writing stories in digital media (going beyond the traditional video digi-story), but also full of ideas for story writing and narrative in general.
- Silvia Tolisano’s comprehensive series, Digital Storytelling Tools for Educators:
- Part I - Connect, Communicate, Collaborate
- Part II - Available tools
- Part III - PhotoStory Guide
- Part IV - Windows MovieMaker
- Part V - Google Maps
- Part VI - Voicethreads
- Part VII - Mixbooks
- Part VIII - Audacity
- Part IX - Wordle
- Digital Storytelling - Downloadable PDF Files
- An assessment rubric for digital storytelling at the Western Massachusetts Writing Project digital storytelling website. Also contains a step-by-step guide on how to make a digital story, including instructions for using MovieMaker.
Steve Shann has created an excellent adaptation of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project rubric - it is worth adding in full below. You can read about how Steve remixed and refined this rubric through online discussion with colleagues on his blog.
