Original 55

Digital Storytelling Teachers Group at ECOO 2010 Creative Commons Photo Credit: Andrew Forgrave As I prepare for my latest digital storytelling session at the end of the month with teachers at a school-based professional learning group, I've been looking back to the many sessions and resources collected over the years. In 2009 I was alerted via a blog post by my friend and fellow digital storytelling influencer Gareth Morlais about a book that was ground-breaking at the time. Story Circle: Digital Storytelling Around the World. The book claimed "the world's first comprehensive account of personal digital storytelling in several countries". Imagine my surprise when I saw listed on page 41 my very first large-scale school project. A project that took a group of 4 or 5 digital storytelling teacher facilitators to 8 different schools over a period of 6 months to introduce digital storytelling to student writers' groups. This was back in 2005 and 2006. There is an explanation in the book on page 45 that only 55 digital storytelling projects were completed in elementary schools at the time of writing. Our target group was grade 4, 5 and 6 students. Fast forward eight years and although the names and the faces of participants have changed the storytelling has not. You see, the particular brand of storytelling I help people with is personal storytelling. You know the ones, where you tell the story from something in your life. It could be a memory of someone close to you, a first meeting, a special place. Participants often arrive at the session with a completely different story in mind. As participants open up and start talking about their stories, folks often adjust their story or completely switch to something more personal. Oh, there is often safety in telling a story that is not too personal. I started that way. But the stories that go straight to the heart are the ones that move us and sometimes make us cry. So I look forward to the end of the month because I never know what type of stories I'll have the honour of listening to. I do know that I'm always moved by personal stories. And always have been.

You can listen to Original 55 online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Original 55 is an episode from DigitalStory.ca by Kent Manning.

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This episode was published on Nov 3, 2013.

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