Commercial digital stories

At the Gathering we discussed commercial digital stories as an emergent issue. For some the idea is a problem; for others, opportunity. So I thought I’d share some examples of this sort of thing for discussion and background information.

Turn Here hosts videos celebrating local businesses, primarily, such as restaurants. The format is familiar: two-three minutes, a mix of video and photography, minimal effects, all driven by a narrative voiceover. The Mercury News has an article on Turn Here.  (thanks to Robert  Scoble)
Kodak has a story center on their website, devoted to narratives about photography and photo tips.

Sun Microsystems publishes digital stories about networked computing and technology. For example, these videos tend to have the familiar three-or-so minutes length. (NB: not all are accessible now)

MIT prof Henry Jenkins has a new book out, Convergence Culture. Very interesting, accessible stuff, looking at fan culture and storytelling across media. Among many other things, he describes various communities that are primarily commercial, such as the fan groups centered on Coke (!) (68-74) (official one here). Coke communities (I can’t believe I’m typing this) have storytelling, like these text stories. Jenkins explains his focus on commercial community storytelling somewhat here.

Neema’s Digital Story

A number of people asked for a link to Neema’s Story about the July 7th bombing in London. It is on a BBC server which may be restricted to UK i/p addresses only. Anyway, give it a try.

Right vs Wrong by Neema Begum

there is a text version of her story on the BBC Newsround site which will have universal access.

Barrie – digistories

Danielle’s Photos on Flickr

Hi y’all! Here’s a few of my photos from the Gathering, posted on Flickr.

Stay tuned for video exerpts on my blog

Electronic Portfolios

Here are websites that I referred to in my presentation today:

• Purposes for Digital Stories in Electronic Portfolios – a work in progress (August 2006) – I would love to add other links that are on the WWW that could illustrate some of these different purposes
• Authentic Assessment with Electronic Portfolios using Common Software and Web 2.0 Tools – a work in progress (August 2006) – to be published in an updated version of Coming of Age: an introduction to the new World Wide Web

Helen Barrett, electronicportfolios.org

Games and story prompts

In the session on Friday afternoon I spoke about games and story
prompts to help people tell stories. There is a tutors manual for
storytelling that I edited for the BBC and Learning and Skills
Council in the UK. It was written for a radio storytelling project
and the LSC have conveniently put it online as a .pdf. So you can
download it for your self.
“Tell us your story” was written out of the experience of the BBC
teams in England and on the practice of the BBC’s Capture Wales team;
in particular, Gilly Adams, who devised many of the games.

It’s available here – and click on the coloured lips logo!!

You will also find Daniel Meadows’ tutorial useful.

Have fun.
___________________________________________________
digistories
Barrie Stephenson
Digital Storytelling
Consultant and Trainer
Tel: 07885 297669
email: barrie@digistories.co.uk
http://www.digistories.co.uk/

Patient Voices

Our collection of stories gathered from patients, carers, clinicians and service improvement people in the English National Health Service is growing rapidly. You can learn more about the Patient Voices programme, and see low resolution versions of some of the stories at www.patientvoices.org.uk

Here are just a few of the books that have informed our thinking (in addition to Joe’s book of course!):

What seems to be the Trouble? by Trish Greenhalgh – an argument for telling and listening to stories to get a different kind of picture of the patient’s experience http://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/publications/detail.asp?id=0&PRid=225

Medicine and Compassion by Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche with David R. Shlim, M.D. – Dr Shlim noticed that doctors seemed to become less compassionate after going through the boot camp of medical training. He learns from a Tibetan lama that it is possible to regain and retain the compassion that led many into the medical professions in the first placehttp://www.medicineandcompassion.com

The Spirit Catches you and you Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is an extraordinary story of a Hmong refuge family, highlighting the crucial importance of communication in healthcare http://www.spiritcatchesyou.com/

 Life of Pi by Yann Martel – what a story – and what a storyteller!

 Looking forward to meeting you in Ukiah!

StoryCorps materials

Sarah Kramer of StoryCorps has suggested that it would be great if people checked out www.storycorps.net and, more specifically, the following links:

http://www.storycorps.net/about/
where people can learn about StoryCorps generally

http://www.storycorps.net/listen/
where people can listen to the actual pieces

http://www.storycorps.net/listen/index.php?s=sampler
where people can listen to our compilation cds

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4516989
where people can listen to the NPR broadcasts

*NOTE: much of the content of the above links is the same but I thought
it might be interesting to see the different ways the same audio is
showcased to the public and used in different ways to reach different
audiences.

Saving the Sierra

sts2pagerfinal.doc

Jesikah Ross has sent some information and a link about her new project, involving gathering stories of people who have been involved in conservation work in the Sierras.

 Here is the link: www.savingthesierra.org and a summary of her work is attached.

Public health frameworks

frameworks-ucb-article-draft4.doc 

Dick Jackson of UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health invites us to consider some of the issues raised by the epidemics of modern life that are threatening the health of our communities.

How might we use storytelling to promote and improve our health and preserve our world for those who will inhabit it after us?

Potential Blog Experience for The Gathering.

So here we are, with a potential space for our Gathering Blog site.  Many of us live in too many worlds to manage all these blogs, but at least there will be a shared home for whichever conversations need to be sustained.

I look forward to your feedback.

-joe