Thoughts on teaching, technology, learning and life in an era of change.

Posts Tagged ‘ storytelling ’

Do you like telling stories?
October 13th, 2009

I like telling stories. What sort of stories do I like to tell? Stories about days at school, life in the ANZ Bank, stories my father told me, historic sagas and the like.

Where do stories come from? Have you ever wondered about that? Stories come from passion, imagination, experience, tragedy, success, life and death. Stories come from places you have been, places you want to be. Stories come from inside you. Stories come from people you want to be.

Friends

Friends

Stories can be ignited… by loss, joy, grief, happiness, a turning point, a decision.

Where do stories go? They can travel back in time, leap forward to the future, go deep into your heart. Stories can take you to places that you know and places that you don’t. They can be a vehicle of juxtaposition and transposition as you venture into another dimension.

Mother and daughter, Kyoto.

Mother and daughter, Kyoto.

The sad thing is that some stories never survive. They are not written down. They are not recorded. They are not remembered. They are lost… forever.

Now is the time to record those stories. The ways and means are readily available. Write a blog, record your voice on the computer, make a podcast, make a video. Not next week or next year, but now if you can. Teach your students, teach your relatives, teach your friends, teach yourself.

Do you like telling stories?

Here are some links to get you started…

Alan Levine: Wiki ~ Follow the link to 50 ways to tell a story wiki
Alan Levine: Open Discussion on 50+ ways to tell a story
Alan Levine and Bryan Alexander: Educause article on 50+ ways to tell a story ~ PDF
Alan Levine: New Media Consortium Presentation: 50 Ways to Tell a Story
Miguel Guhlin: Digital storytelling workshop wiki
Miguel Guhlin: Place based storytelling
Miguel Guhlin: Digital storytelling with web based tools Wiki
Miguel Guhlin: Voicethread Tutorial
Matthew Needleman: Digital Storytelling Blog Carnival #1 and #2
Educational Origami ~ Voicethread Tutorial
Web 2.0 Storytelling Wiki
Center for Digital Storytelling
Digital Storytelling Toolkit
Instructify: Digital Storytelling
Keeping the Mood Light: Digital Storytelling
Open Thinking: Center for Future Storytelling
The Art of Storytelling
International Day of Sharing Life Stories

Winter approaching…
May 9th, 2009

Winter approaches. It is an incredible Autumn morning here on the Illawarra coast.  See the little photo below.
 
Digital storytelling has crossed my mind of late. Recently conducted a workshop on the topic. It was most enjoyable. I had a creative and highly participative group of teachers and academic staff based in Singapore.
 
Digital storytelling is fine in itself. The term ‘digital’ does not rest well with myself. I tire of prefixing teaching and learning strategies with terms such as ‘digital’, ‘web 2.0′ and the like. At times I have no choice as such terms are required to market my workshops.
 
Storytelling is simply that. It is irrelevant which tool you apply to tell the story. Paper, paint, voice, keyboards. As long as the story is shared.
 
If the story can be shared via traditional approaches then why bother with ‘digital’ methods? The key to that question is to ensure that the digital strategy provides an avenue of expression and interaction not possible with the traditional approach. The technology has to make a difference.
 
Technology affords many possibilities in this regard. Where to begin?
 
Take good old Audacity, for example. You know, the free open source audio recording and editing software. A single storyteller can create a multitude of characters with some careful editing, selecting and filtering.
 
I would recommend storyboarding beforehand. Generate characters, a plot and the script, even just in general terms. Once the story is mapped out then the recording can begin.
 
Audacity allows multiple tracks to be recorded so a variety of characters can be recorded by an individual. Tracks can be named according to character and dialogue.
 
How to differentiate between the various characters if a single student has recorded the story? Select the track for a particular character and alter the pitch using the appropriate effects filter. Raise the pitch, lower the pitch. A single student can be a burly bouncer, an anxious astronaut, or a vexed vixen.
 
Plug in more than one student and you could have a virtulal panoply of characters.
 
You could even have an extraterrestrial in the mix. Record any dialogue. Filter the dialogue using ‘pitch’ and ‘backwards’. There you have it, one alien. Allow the remainder of the dialogue to generate an understanding of the conversation with the alien. Could be an exercise in itself: Codebreaking first contact with an alien species.
 
Audacity also allows for tracks to be easily shifted backwards and forwards in the timeline affording opportunities for flashbacks, stories to be told backwards, and the juxtaposition of contrasting dialogue.
 
You can also make use of both channels with some mixing. Play two pieces of dialogue simultaneously and simply ensure one is mixed to the left channel and the other to the right channel. A single student could generate an argument between two different characters.
 
The characters could come from different times, dimensions, places, planets, universes and states of being. Why interview a person when you could interview a ‘rock’, a ‘leaf’ or an ‘atom’? Give it a voice and let it explain the meaning of life. Personification is a great teaching and learning strategy when peppered with a little dose of Audacity.
 
Then there is the tool adored by many. Voicethread. It is a pity, dare I say it, that it is web based. Would love to see a software client for the tool that allowed offline storytelling creation that could then uploaded to the web.
 
Voicethread is nevertheless a useful tool. Take an old photograph. Upload it and invite others to recollect or tell their story. “I was there too…”
 
Upload a fake photograph to Voicethread courtesy of a little photoshopped magic. Invite analysis and feedback.
 
Invite your students to generate a storyboard. Paint the story, scan the artwork, upload to Voicethead and have others tell the story. More artwork, more ideas. A Voicethread soap, saga or serial.
 
Need to go. Lunch and an impending flat battery. More later.

Sent via iPhone through a Posterous wormhole to alternative universes in Twitter, Facebook and the Watershed.

Posted via email from Watershed Lite

Exploring sources in history via digital storytelling 2
April 4th, 2009

Earlier today I posted about a project designed to encourage students to gain an understanding of how sources in history can be utilised to build an argument or an account relating to an event, personality or period in history.

Back in 1996, together with artist Nathan Simpson, I created a fictitious landscape back that is bleak and empty of human life. The object for the students was to gather a variety of clues and piece together what has happened. I have reworked a few more images from the project and smaller copies of the same are displayed below together with those also posted earlier.

How would you use these images? A wiki? A blog? A dedicated web site? Allow the students to take the images and rework them and add additional clues?

The completed project will include additional images that depict the embedded clues in an enlarged format.

Simply based on the images shown below what do you think befell the denizens of this landscape?

Opening scene

Closer view of the town

Exterior view of house

Interior view of house

Exterior view of library

Interior view of library

Exterior view of metro rail station

Interior view of metro rail station

Exterior view of research laboratory

Interior view of research laboratory

Exploring sources in history via digital storytelling
April 4th, 2009

Opening scene to “Hunger City” [1996][Large][Original]

Back in 1996 I created a HyperCard stack titled “Hunger City”. It was inpired by two factors. The first was David Bowie’s introductory sequence to the album Diamond Dogs, entitled Future Legend. The second factor was to create a tool that would allow students to explore a range of different types of evidence and then draw their own conclusion. This is a skill required of students in the study of history. They examine the various historical sources, look for accuracy, bias and the like and compose their views regarding the event, personality or subject matter. Science fiction crept into the story for this project as well.

I enlisted the assistance of a former student for this project, Nathan Simpson. I taught Nathan Introductory French language when he was in Year Eight back in 1987. Later I managed the school rock band, The Evicted, in which Nathan was the bass player. Nathan is an excellent artist and over the years we have collaborated on a number of projects. Nathan is an accomplished artist and worthy of your exploration. I shall be MC at his wedding later in the year.

I took Nathan’s original black and white sketches, that were created using pencil, ink, charcoal and toothpaste and reworked them using Photoshop.

Nathan created the original artwork for this HyperCard stack. We sat down together and I shared my storyboard ideas with Nathan. The vision was for a bleak city of the future without human survivors. I am resurrecting the artwork for an online version of the activity. I am reworking the graphics and updating the embedded evidence.

Key navigational elements in “Hunger City” [1996][Large]

When students explored the HyperCard stack they were able to collect “clues” and make notes. The desolate city that was the underlying metaphor for the ‘story’ featured four areas that were enriched with clues: House, Library, Metro station and a Research Lab. The objective for the students was to determine what had happened to “Hunger City” and report back. I am updating this process with current tools in mind.

So, using the evidence presented in just the two scenes above what do you think happened to the denizens of “Hunger City”? There are many more scenes in the pipeline.

I am thinking of renaming “Hunger City”. What would you name this place? Mortopolis? The Place of the Dead? The Bleak?I would be happy to read your ideas.

What’s your story?
March 29th, 2009

A number of years ago I attended a workshop conducted by Kym Nadebaum in which he shared an approach to storytelling using a combination of stills, audio and video. The group utilised tools such as iMovie, Garageband, Audacity and others. It was most enjoyable.

I was quite familiar with the tools yet it was simply a great opportunity to meet up with other teachers from across Australia and New Zealand. Had a thoroughly good time. Kym Nadebaum is a great presenter and a dedicated educator.

I produced a short clip about my father Francis Xavier Larkin Snr, a former prisoner of war. I include it below. Download the clip.