Digital Storytelling and the Importance of Performance

In doing some additional research on digital storytelling, I had to go all the way back and ask , “What is it?” DS106 has had a strong “Just do it” ethos from before the beginning. However, I’ve been a bit stuck as I tried to explain to non “initiates” just what it was all about.

As I poked around Wikipedia, I found the Center for Digital Storytelling, from which the term seems to have sprung. In the beginning, digital storytelling seems to have had a narrower definition than it does today. Essentially it was

Recorded narration + musical background + slideshow with Ken Burns effect.

The Wikipedia article also pointed to a digital storytelling site put together by BBC Wales, which stuck to the early definition of the form. Many of the stories had transcripts of the narration, and this led to a discovery.

Rather than wait for videos to load, I tended to read the transcript and then decide if the story was interesting enough to bother watching the full version. After sitting through several videos, I realized that the digital part of the storytelling often didn’t add that much to the experience. You saw some nice pictures and heard the author’s voice, but they were just reading their story, not telling it.

For illustration, compare Seamus Heaney reading the opening of his Beowulf translation with Benjamin Bagby telling the story in the original West Saxon. I’ve read the Heaney translation aloud, and it is, IMHO an excellent rendering of Beowulf into modern English. One can read it aloud and feel like you’re telling a story rather than reading a translation, which is no mean feat. Nevertheless, Bagby claims your attention in a way that Heaney just doesn’t.  So what does this comparison of Beowulf readings have to do with digital storytelling?

When we transcend text, we are making stronger claims on our audience’s attention.  If we’re going to tell stories digitally, we need to back up those claims with something that holds that attention. Just as much as how to use the tools, it’s important for us to help would be digital storytellers that they are, well, storytelling , with all the performance aspects that that entails.

MobiMOOC Week 1

This week I’ve started participating in a MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) on mobile learning.   The opening week’s topic asked how I use mobile learning.  I have to admit that mobile learning is a fairly new thing for me, as it’s only in the last 18 months that I’ve had an appropriate device.  Perhaps I should try to define “appropriate device”.  My first cell phone was a Motorola C139.  I think it might have had a web browser, but the screen was so small and the connection so slow that I never used it.  It was only when I got a smartphone that I started developing an interest in m-learning.

At least I think it’s an interest in m-learning.  I worry that I may fall into the trap that this post tells you to avoid. My smartphone is so smart that it is really a pocket computer running a touchscreen optimized OS that happens to have a cell phone radio in it. That combined with the fact that I work in elearning at a traditional higher ed institution, means that I see mlearning through a traditional lens of course objectives and credit hours, even though I don’t learn with my mobile device that way.  Having a smartphone has moved the gigantic information repositiory of the global Internet from my desktop to my pocket (at least until the battery dies).  The just in timeness of it all is amazing, but I question whether it would work for learning that isn’t snippet sized, and I do believe that much of the most important learning we do happens in bigger-than-snippet sized portions.

The other way in which having a smartphone has changed how I learn is by making my Personal Learning Network more accessible.  I tend to use twitter rather than facebook for keeping up with my informal professional peer network. Surprisingly (or maybe not), the learning that happens here is serendipitous.  Rather than posting a question and waiting for a response, I’ll see something of interest posted by someone I follow and use that as a jumping off point.