I spoke today at the Digital Storytelling conference here on the University of Wisconsin campus.  From their site:


Storytelling is an oral tradition used to teach beliefs and values, and to transfer knowledge. Building on the traditional model of storytelling, digital storytelling facilitates development of metacognitive skills through the integration of technology and personal reflection.

While there is no doctrine defining a digital story as a distinct genre, it has become generally associated with a short film (less than 5 minutes), which is a mixture of a written and recorded voiceover with still and moving images, and often a soundtrack. Digital stories are often told in the first person voice and can be used to create connections between students, instructors and content.


The morning kicked off with a welcome from organizer Cheryl Diermyer, followed by a talk by Joe Lambert from the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley. He emphasized the five aspects of digital storytelling: personal reflection and growth, education and awareness, movement building, policy advocacy, and research and evaluation.  There are some great examples of digital stories on the CDS website, and also on the Stories for Change site.


After lunch, I took part in a panel on how educators are using digital stories with students.  I focused on my work with high school students and digital poetry, particularly on how it is situated within new literacies.  I made the argument that digital poetry is just as much about the ‘new tech stuff’ as the ‘new ethos stuff’ (Lankshear and Knobel) and that educators need to develop opportunities for multimodal learning in their classes.  One example of digital poetry that I included was a student responding to Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing Poem” with a poem of his own, entitled “I, Too, Sing America.”  It shown how his experience of America, as a gay, Asian teen is situated outside the dominant cultural ideology.  Audience members did ask interesting questions about how to assess this type of work – while I used rubrics (as a teacher, I had no choice but to assign grades) and referred to the state standards (as my district required that we align our curriculum with them), I agree that we do need more.  (Or is it, less?)


David Gagnon spoke on the same panel about his work with the ARIS project to build a tool to situate stories into spaces.  Fascinating stuff.  Unfortunately, I had to leave the conference before Liv Gjestvang from OSU’s Digital Union and Roger Schank from Socratic Arts spoke.  (Good excuse:  I had to teach a class myself!)  But truly, a great event all around.

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