Communicating Effectively: More Digital Story Telling

[Kent Brooks]

I was just thinking as I am getting ready to teach class tonight that the traditional presentation software such as Power point is out of vogue a little bit. We are ultimately talking about communication and the tools for creating effective communication have improved so much in the past five years. The basic slide show can easily be enhanced with tools such as Prezi See a sample Prezi below:

http://prezi.com/lw7qeuidxswy/

If you can create a presentation that combines audio and video you have mixed a picture is worth a thousand words and the spoken word whereas in the traditional presentation at little bit of text in combo with too much talk often make a depressing display. How often have you listened to a presentation and heard the line, "I know this is a little hard to read" which should always be followed by the line "but I worked so hard making this stupid presentation that I am going to force you to look at this unreadable jibberish anyway."

Now what sense does that make? None, but we see it all the time even in the classroom. I suggest we think more about communicating effectively and using tools to do so rather than subjecting people to death by Power point.

Here are a couple of links which are about communicating effectively. The second in this list I don't always agree with the message, but the delivery of the message is almost always very good

http://presentationsoft.about.com/od/firststeps/p/lose_audience.htm

http://www.ted.com/

What is Digital Storytelling?

Digital story telling in my guesstimate is another for of communicating effectively. Our friends at Wikipedia say "Digital Storytelling" is an emerging term, one that arises from a grassroots movement that uses new digital tools to help ordinary people tell their own 'true stories' in a compelling and emotionally engaging form. These
stories usually take the form of a relatively short story (less than 8
minutes) and can involve interactivity.

“Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. Digital stories derive their power by weaving images, music, narrative and voice
together, thereby giving deep dimension and vivid color to characters,
situations, experiences, and insights. Tell your story now digitally.”
- Leslie Rule, Center for Digital Storytelling

My Digital Hero Wes Fryer author of Speed of Creativity has developed a project focused on Digital story telling called Story Chasers Inc. Storychasers is an educational nonprofit empowering learners to become digital witnesses, archiving local oral history and sharing that history safely on the global stage of the Internet.http://storychasers.org/

Have to go to class so that is all for now.