Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling. So what is it? Stories told digitally of course! Okay now the obvious and general concept is cleared up let's dive into the specifics. When you think of stories what exactly comes to mind? Elaborate fantasies, structured plot lines, in depth characters? Of course if you want to be fancy and critical and put alot of room for analysis but we don't need all that. Digital stories can be practically anything, actually alot of things can tell stories, its just how one interprets it. I learned about this during a MOOC talk about Digital Storytelling and Metaliteracy.

Stories don't have to be told in many words or use alot of visuals. Like early cave paintings a seemingly simple drawing can spread alot of meaning and story. Like modern art, simple forms can take on a whole lot of meaning, that is if you can see it. 

Now let's back to words; often in school I was taught a certain structure for stories. Beginning, middle, end. 

Now I never liked telling stories due to this structure and also because I am wired into short bursts of thought. And I'm not talking about intellectual ideas, Mostly insignificant little brain bubbles, the kind that don't make much sense or have proper grammar.Who would ever listen to those kind of things? Would you even call it a story or are you expecting a published, reviewed, work from Huffington Post or the like? Well one thing I learned from the MOOC talk about digital storytelling is that there are thousands upon thousands (maybe millions?) of digital stories being published, or should I say posted? And many are posted on a whim.

As you can guess, these stories are told through YouTube, blogs, and let's go so far to mention Facebook and Twitter. Now you may wonder how can a silly ol' tweet be digital storytelling?

I am presenting a thought.., my story.., an idea.., out there. Care to listen? Care to comment? Care to care? Its really not a complex thing. Stories are ideas. Ideas spread through any form or media. The media here is electronic.., digital.., technological.. that's all. Storytelling in a digital format.