Storytelling

My National Writing Project colleagues are engaging in a shared digital storytelling venture. They’ve divided up the alphabet and are creating digital stories based on these letters. You can hear Kevin explain this joint venture, The ABC Collaborative Movie Project, on Voice Threads. And check out Kevin’s contribution to the project on the letter “Z.”

While exploring these creations on the Tech Stories blog, I ran into this video of Ira Glass talking about storytelling. Kevin suggested that it might help them as they create their Alphabet Stories. It’s actually quite interesting to listen to because he talks about how telling a story for radio or TV is quite different than what we were all taught telling a story was in our H.S. English classes.

He suggests, there are two basics–the anecdote (a sequence of actions) and a reflection. I couldn’t help thinking that there are some similarities there to blogging. Blogging quite often is a sequence of thoughts, that build on each other, often spurred from another’s thinking on their blog or (like this blog entry, my thinking spurred on by listening to Ira Glass’s thinking that I stumbled upon through Kevin’s thinking) with reflection. I’d like to suggest that the best blogging entries include both as well! A good story, built on a sequence of thoughts, followed by reflection. Not just the thinking. Not just the reflection.

I’m ready to go out and buy a mini portable video camera and jump into this exciting world of digital storytelling. Although, as you’ll notice when you view some of the other Letter movies, digital storytelling can be done with still pictures as well. These folks have links to some great tutorials. So, come along! And check out these links and kid digital stories at Lakeland Schools, WOW! My favorite is The Phone Call on the Streetside Stories link. Now, that’s some kinda voice!