Me In Week 3 – Telling Stories

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Weekly Summary Checklist

Here’s a run-down of what I accomplished in DS106 Headless 13 Week 3 – Digital Storytelling.

First Things First:

Rockylou_HeadlessWhat is a story? What is storytelling? What is digital storytelling? Wanting to understand and become a better digital storyteller is what attracted me to DS106 in the first place, so I’ve been doing some serious pondering all week.

In my professional life as a strategic business/technology analyst at 3M I am often presented with a great deal of data and information that needs to be communicated to a variety of audiences with different levels of interest and familiarity with the subject matter.  Sharing the raw data, as it were, would almost certainly be a waste of time for everyone.  It’s my job to “COMMUNICATE” that information, not just gather it and spit it back out again.

I am paid to be a curator of information AND a storyteller. It is the story I create and tell that is based upon that data and information that is the key. Even the media I use to tell the story has an impact on the effectiveness of communicating the information. With a global asynchronous audience I can’t rely on personally sharing the story in real-time with a live person in attendance who is engaged in the moment, that can ask questions, get clarification, etc. Mastering the art of DIGITAL storytelling is a must for me. Read my complete blog entry Whatsa’ Story! for more. And here’s a cute tappable digital story from Nathalie using the Tapestry app I learned about in our DS106 Google+ Community. (If you see a great big blank space below, refresh your screen and try again. Embedding the Tapestry stories is buggy.)

And from one of my 3M-DS106 Salon Members: “Storytelling Used in Poaching Talent (3M-DS106 Repost)” shares how storytelling can be used in a number of ways, from sharing experiences, showing a vision, an escape from the real world or even poach top talent from another company.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Shape of Stories:

StoryShape_WormsCrawlIn_EditI chose a favorite childhood song that my mother taught us to sing as part of her master plan to keep us kids from fighting, “The Worms Crawl In, The Worms Crawl Out”.

“Did you ever think when a hearse went by, that you might be the next to die. They wrap you up in a big white sheet. They bury you down about six feet deep.  The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out. The ants play pinochle on your snout. Your liver turns to a slimy green. And puss comes out like whipping cream. Your eyes pop out your teeth decay. And this is the end of a perfect day.”

 

Vonnegut’s video was entertaining as well as informative, and I could easily understand how to apply his theory of common graph-able shapes to stories. But mine didn’t quite fit until I had looked at the infographic created by Maya Eilam and discovered the “From Bad to Worse” story shape.

Here’s the video I made for a past daily create TDC577 singing through this sorrowful story shape.

Daily Creates:

tdc611 An Interesting high contrast B&W image of an easily overlooked object:

Lamp

tdc613 Photo representing TDC idea of regular exercises of creativity.  The write-up for this photo included a blog post on the The Chemistry of Creativity: Riding The Dopamine Wave

Riding the DS106 Dopamine Wave

tdc614 an Alien Inspirational Greeting Card

Alien Inspirational Greeting Card

I love the surprises and inspirations I find by following other DS106 blogs and accounts. For the alien greeting card daily create, Bill Smith’s image inspired me to rif-a-GIF.

DS106 Hijacking. View Oiginal Image Here

Shared from rockylou22 using Embeddlr

 

 

tdc615 Idea of Clarity

Clarity

As a bonus daily create from week two, tdc607 –  the movie trailer for my website, was finally completed with A Trailer for Two.

Telling a Story in Photos:

Creating my Five Card Flickr Story ,”Five Card Poetry – My Story” wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be. I was way too literal at first. I started by reading the directions and figured this was going to be a piece of cake- just pick out 5 photos and tell a story ‘about’ them. (ALERT: “about”) I tried a few hands, picked some images that seemed to follow a theme, but none of them told a story…..

Oh… that was different than what I was thinking. They were continuing to flesh out their stories in a poetic rather than a prose format. The photos were telling the story, not me telling a story ABOUT the photos.  Back to the drawing board. This time I got out of my literal mind and engaged my heart and soul to sense what was here. Then the story revealed itself.

I crave community. Do I need to be flashy and bright to be seen? Do I need my words set in stone to be valid? Is it okay to have fun and learn along the way? With heart, body, and soul my story can be shared.

Participating in DS106- It’s not just ME!

Participating in DS106 continues to be a rich learning experience.  As I am facilitating a concurrent version, the 3M-DS106 Salon at my professional workplace, it permeates all areas of my life.  I have found my direct interactions through blogging, commenting, reading, and sharing with other DS106 participants to be more valuable than the lectures or texts shared with us.  This was unexpected. I had wanted to learn about digital storytelling and thought I just needed to get access to the “professionals” out there who could define it for me.  I was mistaken.  Don’t get me wrong. The videos, graphics, texts, etc are helpful, but I learned the most simply reading other DS106ers explain and illustrate their definitions for what a digital story is. Here’s a list of those I could link back to.

3M-DS106 Salon

And sometimes I am totally surprised and delighted with what I find when I pop in to leave a silly comment like when I witnessed a touching father-son interaction in Bill Smith’s post,  Art Making

Website Always Under Construction

ConstructionSign_1

I’m always working to improve the experience of visiting my blog – for my guests and me personally.  This week I…

 

  • Added the Flag Counter and Revolver Maps widgets after seeing it on Ary Aranguiz’s blog, All The World Is A MOOC.
  • Continue to debug my comments interface.  I’ve really appreciated people letting me know they are having problems when trying to leave a comment.  I need to know about stuff like that so I can fix it.  Thanks!

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