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A key change at iCommons
If you're not part of the iCommons mailing list, take a look at the letter that Heather Ford, Executive Director of iCommons, sent to the list yesterday:
Dear friends,
At the 2 August iCommons Board Meeting, the board decided to make some difficult but necessary changes at iCommons. It has become clear over the past months that our vision for iCommons is different from the... more
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The Power of Digital Storytelling
Steve Vosloo · San Francisco (United States) · Oct 23rd, 2006 12:27 pm · 20 votes · no comments made
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http://flickr.com/photos/andrewmoir/165607955/" class="imagelink" href="http://icommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/165607955_a0dfc8094a_b.jpg">![The earliest recording great hunting feats - San Bushman rock art, by moron noodle, CC BY 2.0, <!-- BBCode auto-link start --><a href=]() http://flickr.com/photos/andrewmoir/165607955/" id="image274" style="width: 398px; height: 291px" src="http://icommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/165607955_a0dfc8094a_b.jpg" />Storytelling is as old as humankind. The oldest stories, predating even oral history, were about great hunting feats. In his study of myths, Joseph Campbell describes the tales of animals killed and the afterworld to where their spirits departed, as 'a cacophonous chorus'. Later, our ancestors would paint on cave walls, still using narratives to celebrate rituals and ceremonies. Stories recorded important events, expressed commonly held values and were used to pass on wisdom from elders to community members. Ultimately, storytelling was a way to record and make sense of the human experience.
Fast-forward a few thousand years to 1994 in the United States of America. A man is sitting on a log, next to a campfire under a full moon, telling stories to a small group of attentive listeners. But this is not your ordinary fireside setting. The crackling 'fire' is actually virtual, being shown on a PC monitor nestled into a pile of wood; the moon is an image projected onto a background screen. Dana Atchley, the pioneer of multimedia interactive theatre, is on a small stage, spinning a yarn about family, friends and interesting people he met while touring America in a beat-up van, armed with a video camera. As the performance unfolds, he interacts with the audience to select and play home movies that display on another screen behind him, taking the crowd on a trip along the lesser-traveled highways of Middle America. Sadly, he has passed away, but his production company and collection of stories are still available at Next Exit.
The Digital Storytelling Association defines this relatively new art form as 'the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling â?¦ using digital media to create media-rich stories to tell, to share, and to preserve. Digital stories derive their power through weaving images, music, narrative and voice together, thereby giving deep dimension and vivid color to characters, situations, and insights.'
In the early 1990s, Atchley along with Nina Mullen and Joe Lambert, established the Center for Digital Storytelling. Since then, the Center has helped over 6 000 people, from the techno-savvy to the techno-phobic, to use multimedia technology to tell their own digital stories, although these are hosted online instead of presented in person. During a 3-day workshop, students design and produce a short digital story. To illustrate their pieces, they record first-person audio narratives, collect and scan still images and find music for the soundtrack. Of course these story elements can be sourced from Creative Commons. Using editing software, the instructors help them to weave the pieces together and edit their own, personal stories.
Digital stories are used for personal self-expression, such as the Digital Hero Book Project, or to preserve oral and local history like the Capture Wales project. Digital stories can be used for advocacy such as ending gender-based violence and preventing HIV/AIDS in South Africa, corporate knowledge sharing, involving customer stories as a form of marketing, and increasingly, for educational purposes. In America, where some classrooms have access to computers, digital video cameras, digital cameras, audio recorders and editing software, students are creating stories about almost anything, from the tough life choices facing teenagers today to physical places in their lives.
Before this Place Project, each of the fifth-graders at Maria Hastings School, Massachusetts, was asked, "Are you a writer?" Sixty percent responded 'yes'. When asked the same question after the project, ninety-nine percent said 'yes'. Digital storytelling isn't just a way to help students to find their inner writer, but is shown to develop communication and critical thinking skills.
Today, all people still have a basic need to share stories. With more powerful multimedia tools in the hands of the general public, we are seeing the tables turn on the traditional media producer-public consumer role. In 2004, Chris Anderson wrote an article called The Long Tail, which expands on this role reversal and its effects on traditional media dynamics. It is clear from sites such as Jumpcut and Ourmedia that the power to create content is increasingly in the hands of the people. Through video blogging, or vlogging, it is possible to keep an online diary, produce a story to raise awareness around a particular issue, or just have some fun.
But this proliferation of user created content, hosted on sites such as YouTube and Google Video, is not all good. Not all of this content constitutes digital storytelling -even though much of it claims to be - or has value for society. In our next article we will profile Amy Hill of the Center for Digital Storytelling to hear her views on why it's important to keep up the quality and focus of traditional digital storytelling. She will describe ways to ensure that when you get into the director's chair, you produce a quality, compelling story and make your voice heard above the din. In the meantime, the extensive list of digital storytelling links on Tech Head Stories is a good place to find out more about this empowering practice.
While we no longer paint pictures on cave walls, the value in using stories to make sense of our lives and the lives of others is still the same. Digital storytelling uses today's multimedia tools to create powerful and intimate stories that still move us. Just listen to Thembi's Diary, a perfect example of how digital storytelling provides a cathartic healing experience for those who tell their stories, but also empowers the voiceless by offering a tool for activism.
This article is the first of the Digital Hero series which will be published on icommons.org until May next year. Steve is developing the Digital Hero Book Project as a fellow of the Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford University. Some of the stories he'll be writing will be about the use of CC licences in the project, best practice advice for ICT4D projects and profiles on key people in the field. The Digital Hero Book Project still needs added funding to cover their shortfall for the pilot. For more information and to donate to the project, visit Molotech's site.
Photograph: The earliest recordings of great hunting feats - San Bushman rock art, by moron noodle, CC BY 2.0.
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