Digital Story: My perspective

Without prior knowledge of digital story writing before this class I was sort of worried about this project. I knew not what to expect or even who my group members were. At first, I thought that I should make an elaborate storyline in my page and really put a ton of effort into it. But then these two classes called Chemistry and Biology decided that they were going to hold my life hostage, so less effort was put into it. Going in, I did the impromptu strategy and just tried to think of things from the top of my head. I was also happy to see that my partner also had the same idea going into the project which was impromptu writing. What made this project easy was that there was a prior story to build off of but it was also almost too much because there was too much going on. By the end of my group’s page, I felt like we just threw in another loop in the story that doesn’t really go towards an ending. But after reading the end of the story I see that the final group tied the story in well.

I don’t know the intentions of the first group but I’m pretty sure they didn’t intend on it to be this weird mystery. It started off with a generic adventure theme then morphed into a mystery type story. The way it formed into a mystery was because the second group brought up topics that weren’t answered which gave the story a “to be continued...” feel. Then I started to notice that students began to follow that path or pattern of the “to be continued…” feel. Even the characters in the story gradually began to get even more mysterious, especially the main character Duke. He started off as like a normal kid going to school and then turned into the keeper of the box (I believe).

What I enjoy most about the story was that people inserted pictures and hyperlinks that went with some of the objects and situations. Like a normal short story, the digital story had normal pictures insert into the text which gave it that story book feel. The digital story also included hyperlink to words that pertained the most to the story, which in my opinion kept its integrity of being a blog type project. The hyperlinks is what made the story distinctly electronic because without it, it might as well have been a picture book, but just online.

So in conclusion, I believe the digital story project was very interesting to do. Even though I didn’t put as much effort in as I could have put in the project it still turned out pretty decent. It started off as an adventure then slipped into a mystery that randomly tied its self-back together at the end of the digital story project. It would have been better if we would have work on a page individually so it could be even more creative but it would probably have been a really long story.

Digital storytelling

In class, i learned that Digital Storytelling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories. As with traditional storytelling, most digital stories focus on a specific topic and contain a particular point of view. However, as the name implies, digital stories usually contain some mixture of computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips and/or music. 

The biggest differences between traditional  storytelling and digital storytelling are you can see the images and you can hear the sounds. This is the best way to understand what narrator trying to tell you. In another hand, this is the best to telling stories and explaining stories.

Our project was amazing, this group project is the best group project i have ever did. we need to create a story after prior group's work. This is a fantastic idea for help students practice their creative thinking skills and creative writing skills. If you compared digital writing group project with my high school writing project, it has so many differences. In our high school writing class, I never did such a work like this. Teacher only let us to write different kinds of stories. It is vapidity. This group project made writing much more interesting to me. This project makes me love writing. Follow the prior writing, we can create much more plot. You can add link, picture, map, video, even sound in there. It was incredible. 

When I work with my group member, we think together and add different idea into our writing.  First, we read prior group's work. According to their work we need to create what is going to happen next. We create the secret map in there and we create the meeting point in the story too. We tried our best to made this story interesting. Both of us did well in this group project. We did a great job. We learned and we had a great time.

now, I actually want to talk about the debate too. It is awesome that some group have the topic which is related to the digital story telling. Debate is another thing that I think is awesome in this class. student get together debating about some hot topic. I was in the positive group for give international student green card after they graduated. All of us did a great job. I think instructor torsa's let us debate is because debate can actually help us growing speech ability and English speaking skills. It also practicing our thinking skills, explore our potential. 

in this class, we learned a lot of things. how to be a good writer, how to be a good reader, how to be a good thinker, and how to be a good narrator. I learned all of those in this class. In this class, i figured out that if you  work hard enough you will get the pay back. i will never forget this class and instructor Torsa. God bless everyone in this class.

Relaying Ideas through Writing

Relaying Ideas through Writing

             In high school the type of writing that we did included research papers and creative writing. I have never been a fan of writing; it always feels like a battle. I would much rather discuses a topic with someone than type a paper and have them read it. Through the years I have come to respect writing. Writing allows you to relay ideas and look at subjects in more complex ways. Relaying an idea in a research paper feels otherworldly compared to relaying an idea through creative writing. Both forms give me an outlet to express how I like to look at things.

I have always loved debating a topic with someone. When discussing a topic with someone, you make a claim and support it with facts and knowledge. After listening to the claims and support someone else puts forward you are required to defend your view. During these discussions it is possible to see flaws in your own claims, this allows you to revise and change your claim. If you constantly pick apart a subject and think about it from different perspectives you can form a well-educated argument that can hold up under scrutiny. Research papers allow me to have a debate without the need for a second person to be present. I start by picking a topic and researching it. Next, I make an argument/claim about the information. After that, I research other people’s opinions on the subject. I take those opinions and mine and debate them in the form of a paper. When I use the opinions and cross analyze them I support them with research. At the end of the paper I can form a stronger claim that is supported with facts and has answers to opposing view point. Research papers allow me to learn while I wright by dissecting a subject and looking at it in a multitude of mays.

Research and debating can get tiring though. Sometimes, I do not want to support a claim with fact or learn from a new perspective. Creative writing provides me with a way to let loose and branch out with writing. Research papers are more in reality and creative writing can be anything that you make it. I can be realistic and write about something that is non-fiction or I can write fictitious stories. Fiction is a way for me to relax because there are not rules. I can relay ideas that need no support and build an idea with no research. Creative writing is, in my opinion, the fun side of writing.

Something about Digital Medium

It is my first time to write a digital story with so many people. I sometimes enjoying writing about my feelings on my blog and I've write some fictions on my writing class. However, that is my first time to write a digital story. The digital finished by the whole class is better than my imagination. Everyone have a different story, no matter where we start to write the story, we have a entire story in our mind, some details we give might be the most important clues we expect. Also, in this project, we can publish the digital by the medium. The illustration that we got on the Internet can also make the story more vivid.

The appearance digital medium has a significant influence on our daily life. In the past, the medium we use most must be print. People read printed books instead of electronic books. Also, we now can use some website like Google to find more information. The pictures we have in our digital story can make us be more interested in the story.

As for research, they are similar when you think of how to write them. Both of the digital project and the research paper need to have a theme at first. The next step is to have a draft and plan for the organization. They are similar because they both have to go through the few steps that every article have. However, they are different because the research paper has to be more academic, you may use some slangs in the digital story to make fun but it is not supposed to appear in the research paper.

I think the readers for the digital might be teenagers. Because it is short and we the writers are not that old and knowledgeable so that it might be a little bit simple for the old. I think some books I read about adventure have influences how I think of the development if this digital stories. As the first few group mentioned the box and the map, I actually think it might be an adventure to the treasure at last. This makes me think of the books and the movies, even movies can make the audience see what is happening on the book, many people still think that it is better to read book. It is true, because in the movie, many details are changed. Also, you can imagine more and understand more about the theme of the books.

Differences of Research Papers and Creative Writing

Throughout all my years of schooling I was never asked to write anything creative. It always seemed to be a response to a book in an English class or a research paper on something scientific or controversial. This has always been fine with me because I can definitely say that I tend to not be as much of a creative of a thinker as one need to be to be able to write a decent creative story. I have always stuck to the facts and given my two cents on them. For example the most creative I had to go in high school was deciding which controversial topic I wanted to write a research paper on, which obviously is not creative at all. I have always have had a tendency to prefer writing research papers due to the way I think about things and the general characteristics of each of these types of papers.

When writing a research paper it seems easier because all that is required is to get the facts on each side of a topic and decide which one you support more. Once this is decided it is easy to give the supporting evidence you find and even give your own input on this evidence. Through doing this you can even challenge you with the opposing evidence and refute what is said. This has always been the one type of writing I have been able to be decent at. This is definitely a more logical type of paper and is something that is much easier for someone with my mindset to do.

In a creative writing project it is necessary to basically go from scratch and tell a story with no set end or beginning. I prefer to be able to rely on facts that are either already given or that can be made and not have to create a brand new story out of scratch. I have never been to just come up with stories off the top of my head and that is definitely something that is useful to be able to do if you are going to write a creative story. The mindset needed to write a creative paper is one where you must be able to think “outside of the box,” and be able to just come up with twists and turns in a plot in a story unlike just having cold hard facts and deciding if you agree or disagree on them.

Digitial storytelling: reunion

In the first place, I was so nervous about writing this digital story telling because I didn’t think that I truly understood what is that means. Also, I thought the topic maybe the problem. That is the first time I wrote English story and posted it on public space. I never wrote something in English and posted on the Facebook to tell a story or something else. Fortunately, I have an American teammate that he helped a lot to help me correct grammar and edit structure of sentences. Generally speaking, we got the job done and did it ok. Our story is trying to express a simple idea: a simple moment could be significant, and a moved story will occur any time on any one in our daily life. Life is that simple and magnificant.

We didn’t have too much time to get this project done, because our due time was right on the midterms week, all the spare time we had was night. We contacted each other couple times to coordinate an available schedule to do this. We had some debate about what was our story topic. Also, we had different ideas about the story telling. I think that the most difficult part in doing the project is how to come to an agreement with our teammates. We decided to write this short story because it was simple and ordinary. This story is not completely frictional; we just edited some scenes and their names. It didn’t have a significant thesis in this story, like those heroes created legacy in ancient time, or an innovation changed the whole world. We picked this story because it just like something could happen around us in daily life. Troy picked name for the two characters to make it sounds more native. We discussed a lot about the whole story structure, emphasizing that the start should be smooth and natural. I thought up that Duke knocked on the door because when we wrote this story I just thought up that a mailman knocked our door at that afternoon. We all agreed that it was very daily; it just made the process of the story went smooth. Dialogues between two people was simple, we wanted that simple. “I am your uncle, Duke” seems like sudden, but that was the best we can do… We definitely cannot write an awesome drama script! But still our story is definitely a good material for movie. 

Searching good pictures was not a piece of cake. Actually, this was Troy’s idea, insert some pictures and let those pictures talks for us. What is the most charming in novel or story is words let people imagine, inserting pictures will help readers create more imagination in mind, just like watching a movie. We got that green-eye picture from Internet and edited it a little bit with photo shop; just made it looks greener. The best picture we found is that two people carrying the huge heart, it explains that love maybe the responsibility that two people share. We thought that this story started from two people’s absence of responsibility. And I suggested that we should use that last picture as a cartoon one, it just made the whole story warm. Family should be relative to warmth, and this relationship between people seems like more precious in this world. This is what we want to express in this short story.

     

New Writing Perspectives and Exploration of Different Mediums

A medium is the platform on which your art is created on. Writing has many different types of mediums from print, to digital. In this project, it was the art of story telling and the medium was the Internet. More specifically the medium was Google Plus. This project, being my first fictional writing assignment online, introduced to me different mediums that writing has to offer such as Internet, print, and additions of audio/visual props to enhance the effect of story telling and to help allow myself to become a better and stronger writer.

I had mentioned earlier that this assignment had been my first-ever online fictional writing. In all actuality, I really enjoyed doing this. I really liked building the story off of the other stories. Being the last group to write also was also pretty cool. I was able to gather and absorb the information from the past stories and tie them all together with a few twists of my own. I really liked having total control of the outcome to the whole story. This, however, was a little bit of a challenge compared to the first group to write. The first group gets to choose whatever they want to write about. I was fairly limited because I had to stick to what the story had already given me. It was a good experience though and I would not be upset if I were assigned another project like this in a future class.

The different mediums of writing were things that I had never really thought about before this class. The medium I had only experienced was print. Research papers, essays, and everything else were all written on a print medium. The Internet and blog mediums that were introduced to me in this class changed my perspective on writing. Writing online for an audience was the biggest change to me. The medium of Internet blogging and Google Plus includes an audience to read.  This was a bit of adjustment for me because I had to alter the style of writing I used. I tried to make it so that the audience could feel more engaged and to fully understand the points of the story I was trying to get across. To do this I included visuals including hyperlinks and pictures. This was also a first for me. Never had I ever before integrated these other medias to show further understanding of the story.  

The new mediums have taught me how to enhance the effect of story telling. Through Google Plus and Internet blogging, I have learned how to use these new mediums effectively through audio/visual aids and directing writing to the audience. This project has also taught me how to adjust the adversity of having never done something before. This writing technique was new to me. So, going though it has taught me a whole new style of writing. Due to this, I have become an all around stronger writer. This was one of my goals for this course and this project has allowed me to achieve this. 

A Creative Experience versus An Informative Experience

Prior to this project, I have never really told a story on a blog using the digital storytelling method. I was very  nervous going into the project as I am not very good at creative writing, or writing in general. However, what I found out through this experience was very interesting. I was surprised how much fun I had working with the media and creating a story that combined traditional story-telling with modern "twists." It was notable that I enjoyed this as much as I did because prior to this I have usually enjoyed writing simple research papers instead of creative writing.

Writing a research paper is so much more different than writing a creative paper. I say that a research paper is easier to write than a creative one because of the simple fact that it is solely based on finding, comprehending, and putting information into context. A creative writing paper involves several more aspects that, in my opinion make the writing more difficult. You have to be aware of so many more details that can seem overwhelming. Creative writing may have much more freedom, but that is not necessarily a good thing. When there is so much freedom in a story, that makes it harder for a writer to focus on the story at hand. Creative writing also has the feat of keeping a reader interested in a story. This can be a daunting task especially if the topic may not seem very interesting to a majority of readers.

However, there are aspects of writing a research paper that can make them harder as well. Many people argue that because of the fact that research papers are generally longer than creative writing papers, that it takes more time and is harder to complete. I argue differently. I think that although they may be longer, generally there is a large amount of information to fill up the pages, while creative writing relies on your imagination and creativity.

This project helped me conquer my "inability" to effectively complete a creative writing assignment. I enjoyed the aspect of linking outside sources (pictures, videos, maps, etc.) to the corresponding words/sections that gave the reader more perspective on the story. It was very fun using the previous blog posts to form a story that relates to many of the different topics that floated around in the previous topics. What I found most interesting about all the pages as a whole was the fact that they could all be read in any order and still make sense. For example, our page (page six) focuses on what happened in the story before the main character was even born, but no matter where you read it, the reader will understand. In this sense, creative writing is much more fun for any reader because, at least in this case, there is a great deal of mystery that surrounds the story and there are so many loose ends that keeps the reader interested.

Creative writing papers and research papers vary greatly in their styles and content, no matter what. However, they both have positives and negatives about them. I believe that it would be harder to write a creative writing paper over a research paper because you can't rely on facts, instead you have to rely on your creativity, imagination, and attentiveness to detail.  This project, however, was very interesting and helped me grow my creative writing skills for the future.

A One-Eighty Change in Perspective on Digital Media

     Outside of the news stories on the home page of my computer and the occasional blog post I run into when researching a topic, my experience with blogs and other forms of digital media has been very minimal.  Blogs are definitely a new way of writing and thinking about writing for me.  Previously I thought of them as not very credible and almost pointless because they did not give me the information I was looking for, which was usually facts.  Although after being in this class and having an actual formal introduction to blogs, I now see they can play a valuable role in the formation of new ideas by serving as a virtual meeting place for discussions and creativity.

     The only other blog I had encountered in some amount of depth before this class was one called Yappi, specifically the page about high school cross country in Cincinnati.  Basically coaches, parents, and really anybody hold discussions about upcoming races and runners throughout the season.  The few times I visited the page I was quickly drawn into the conversation and immediately found myself siding with the opinions of some people and not others.  I find the digital storytelling project very similar to Yappi in the fact that I am easily pulled into the story and want to know what is going to happen next.  Maybe this is the case with all digital media for me since I have had very limited experience with it, but I really do think that digital media adds a whole new dimension to the reading of a piece since there are so many directions that can be taken with all the hyperlinks and pictures.  Sometimes it can even be hard to know where to begin reading since there is so much going on.

     Not only have I discovered digital media difficult to read, I have also found hard to create.  I am not a very technology savvy person and was not very comfortable at all with Google sites in my first few visits.  Thankfully my partner helped figure out the hyperlinking of specific words among other things because otherwise I would have spent a lot more time trying to figure out how to use all the tools.  Even though I found all the options we could go in creating our story to be a little overwhelming, it was really neat how many different ways there were to put our story together.  With books, there is really only a limited number of ways they can be compiled and written, but digital media seems limitless.  It seems to me that it would be possible to talk about the same story in many different types of digital media since the directions one can be taken are endless. 

     After this project and the many different types of stories we have read in the class, I have developed a great respect for digital media.  Reflecting back, my opinion of them before was uninformed and too narrow.  I mainly viewed the internet as a place to confirm facts, discover new information on websites, or even play games.  Now I see how much more the internet can be used for and other places I can find information besides basic websites.  Also I have learned that digital media is very conducive to creativity and new ideas.  With regard to our digital storytelling project, the directions we could go with the plot line of the story are endless along with the ways we can portray the plot line.  This can be looked at as completely overwhelming or as an opportunity to tap into the creative thoughts we do not usually get to display in the structured form learning and projects take in many classes. 

A Novel Twist to the Conventional Art of Storytelling

What is storytelling? A medium of conveying experiences, thoughts and ideas that has been around since the Stone Age, when rock paintings adorned the walls of caves. Storytelling provides both, the author and the audience, with an escape into the world of “what could be”. What draws their attention is the extent to which storytelling has no restriction. For the author, it serves as a portal into a life he creates for himself, while for the readers it’s the mystery of uncovering new and uncharted territory that fascinates them.

That is what this project experience was for me. As the audience to the first few pages written by my fellow classmates and as the co-author of my group’s own page, I entered the world of storytelling.

I have always been a big fan of creative writing. While the main purpose of our English course is to learn how to read and write analytically, I enjoyed this part of creating a new story and blogging about it much more. Many believe that an analytical research paper and creative writing assignment have very little in common, and they are not wrong in thinking so. Research papers tend to dwell on precision, argument and persuasion, while creative writing allows more free flow of thoughts and ideas. However, what these two do share in common is the method by which the author would compile any one of the two. Both forms of writing require a background: something to build upon. Though what course they take thereafter may vary, but a basic outline of the story/research topic is necessary.

Moving on to more specific matters, what was different about this creative writing task was the addition of digital media to the already exciting art of storytelling. To be honest, even after spending days on end online, I have never posted a story on the web or written a blog post. Thus, initially when I started adding digital effects to the story I was a little uncertain of how to go about it. But of course, the availability of Google made things a lot easier. After seeing a number of options like inserting pictures, videos, URLs, drawings, maps etc. I was more overwhelmed than uncertain. However, once I uploaded the first picture and sound clip, I quickly got the hang of things and finished it off quickly.

A few days ago, our class read an excerpt from Alan Kirby’s book on Digimodernism. An unfamiliar term at the start, digimodernism soon linked itself to this assignment. We are in the era where storytelling is now done through digital media. Gone are the days when modern art was the new talk-of-the-town after years of understanding famous paintings, now digital storytelling is here to make its round. Don’t get me wrong, digimodernism in no way can ‘replace’ modernistic views, just as modern art has never ‘replaced’ the work of painters like Picasso and Van Gogh. These simply co-exist and augment to the rich history of storytelling. 

All-in-all, this assignment was a new learning experience for me in terms of familiarity with digital storytelling and blogging. It has also introduced me to the idea of digimodermisn as a new and upcoming era in art. This assignment has also been a good but short escape from the austere world of research papers. 

Storytelling – The 21st Century Way

In the beginning of the class, when we are told that we would be divided into groups to write a digital story, I was quite confused. I wasn’t sure what a digital story was. Besides the concept, I didn’t even know who would be in my group. After a few weeks, we were assigned our groups and explained how to write a story digitally. It was the first time I would be writing a story for a website or a blog. We were explained the concept and were told what all we could do to make our stories interesting.

Digital Storytelling, as the name suggests, is a form of storytelling that integrates the digital resources into the story, making it look more life-like. It lets you add digital media like pictures, videos, maps, audio, hyperlinks, tables, charts, etc. Due to these additions, the author can describe whatever he wants to describe and exactly how he wants to describe it. If the author ever runs out of words, he has something other than words to complete the story.

A few days before our page on Google sites was due, our group got together to continue the story from where the previous group had left it. Once we all gave our inputs, we knew what direction the story was heading towards. The more difficult part was deciding a title. After a brainstorming session, we decided to go with The Address as the title. Once we had penned the story down in rough, we decided to rewrite it in Google sites and digitalize it.

The Google sites interface was fairly easy to use. During school I had learned how to create a website using HTML but this was nothing like it. The interface was very easy and user-friendly. Adding media to the story gave it a complete new dimension. We could actually imagine the story in our mind as if it was a movie. The digital medium helped describe the story exactly how we wanted to. By adding media, everyone would be able to see it with the same view. Nobody could take out two meanings of that story.  

This assignment has been a learning experience for me from the beginning. Not only did I learn how to write a digital story, but also learned how to blog about its experience. Besides that, I also learned how to work in a group to collaborate ideas, creating something from scratch. Digital storytelling is an amazing concept, different from the mundane print that we have been used to reading. It attracts people who don’t like reading also to view it. With all the technological advancements and with the world going mobile, I think digital storytelling will soon take over the regular books and novels.

Digital Storytelling: The Opportunities

                Digital storytelling and blogging are two completely new concepts to me. Before this class I had never heard of digital storytelling and blogging was just something you would hear a few girls giggling about from across the room. Being the type of person who believes in trying anything once, I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to become more acquainted with new digital media and an excellent chance to network with classmates.

                Meeting to write our groups part of the digital story was like my mother dropping me off at the front door of the kindergarten for my first day and driving off with my backpack still in the back seat. Intimidating at first, but I quickly realized that it was a new experience for all of us and we would make it through unscathed. After figuring out how to sign in to be able to actually post the story, I would say the most difficult part of the paper was figuring out the title. Luckily as we became more comfortable with each other and the project, it was more like high school acquaintances spit balling ideas at a lunch table.

                Many times I am hesitant when working on group projects because leaving your grade in the hands of other people sometimes can be scary; but sometimes you have to take new opportunities as they come and I have confidence in my groups work though and thoroughly enjoyed working together on this project with my classmates. Also, I am very lucky, for if I hadn't had classmates to help, I might have not figured out how to put together the story.

                As I sit here and type this blog, it is also a new experience for me. The closest I can say I have ever been to blogging before this class would've been twitter, if you consider that a form of blogging. I have learned through researching and reading other blogs that it is the way of the future. People use blogs to post news, keep people informed on others lives and for the simple use of giving ones opinion or insight on a topic.  

                Although I do not feel as queasy as I might have if I had forgotten my backpack in the back seat of the car, being a new blogger can be just as intimidating as digital storytelling. Questions continually run through your mind such as; is my writing too formal, will people read this, and is what I’m writing relevant to anything?  That is when you move on to your concluding paragraph.

                Not only is digital storytelling and blogging but also the digital medium in general are the future. If one thing could be said about the project is that it was a fantastic opportunity to not only gain experience but also other classmates insight into the class and the project in general. At this point in the project I can now say that my mother has finally brought my backpack back to me, but now, I do not need it. 

The Story Comes to Life

Digital story writing is a great way to have groups to think creatively while working together. It allows the group to brainstorm ideas based on what previous groups have written, yet they still can have liberty to direct the story to where they want it to go.

I hadn't heard of this idea before this class. I've been in contact with many forms of digital media, including online newspapers, social networking, blogs, and many other sources of information. Never, though, have I seen a project that builds on itself and requires active participation to keep the story moving.

While working on this project, I quickly realized how different this was from other writing I've done. Most of the writing I've done in the past was informative. Last year, I was on the journalism staff in my high school and worked on news articles every week. The digital story project was the complete opposite. For this project, my group and I could follow any path we wanted to; our ideas could go freely. Fiction almost seemed unnatural to write after writing informative, nonfiction pieces for so long.

Once my group had an idea as to what we wanted our story to develop into, we were able to add the final touches with pictures and a map. These features almost made the story come to life.  It’s one thing to read about a red satin box with a pink ribbon, but actually having the visual from a given picture makes a world of difference. You’re able to get a solid picture in your mind as you’re reading about the mystery of what’s inside the box.

By following this idea of digital media, I can only imagine how different my favorite stories and novels would be. Most of the classics and popular books are also turned into movies, but that’s different than having the visuals when you’re reading it for the first time.

One of my all-time favorite novels is Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The main character, Elizabeth, is very descriptive of her surroundings and the people she encounters. The first time I read this, I hadn't seen the movie yet. The image I had of the character Mr. Darcy was very different than what the movie showed him as. Although this technology wasn't available during the time it was written, the use of providing images along with the text would make the experience completely different. Mr. Darcy and his estate of Pemberley would have been seen accurately to how the author wanted them, and I would have been given a strong idea of the setting and characters from the very start. This interaction would have given my experience a much more hands-on feeling.

Overall, I would suggest all students to try to experience digital story telling. Even if they do not attempt to write anything, they should still attempt to find this form of media to read through and interact with.  It makes the reading experience so much more interactive, and because of the higher level of communication, the experience is more joyful. 

Using Technology for Good

I really enjoyed collaborating on the digital story project. Before this class, I had never heard of digital story telling. This assignment gave me an opportunity to explore the different types of storytelling, and how different techniques can be used to produce a digital story. Completing this assignment also showed me that using technology to expand the possibilities of storytelling is a very good idea. Another thing I enjoyed was working with my classmates. Working on a project together helped us get to know one another and work together to come up with a great idea.

Our section of the story was a little different than most would have expected. When we started writing, we decided to tell the story from the opposing characters perspective from the first section. Instead of continuing with the same character, we thought it would be interesting to start as the unknown character. For us, it was very fun and interesting to come up with a story. Writing from the opposing view also gave the next groups various opportunities on how to continue the story.

Throughout our story we posted various pictures and we used hyperlinks. A hyperlink is when a word in the text is “clickable” and takes you to a website. Hyperlinking is basically like hiding a link inside a word of the text. Learning how to hyperlink in text was very interesting and could be useful for the future. By incorporating this into our digital story, it gives the readers a chance to interact and explore certain parts of the story and the story’s details. I think that providing these interactive features for the reader is what really sets digital stories apart from traditional stories on paper. Using technology to enhance the readers experience is a great idea and is becoming more popular.

I feel that the more people that start to read and interact with digital stories, the more people will enjoy them. With the impact of technology today, digital storytelling may become the future of storytelling itself. This way of producing text reaches millions around the world. With this text more readily available and more convenient, people will begin to rely on it more and more, and enjoy it as well. In the future, I think that digital storytelling will become very popular among many people of all ages. With as much technology that is used today, using it for story telling could be very beneficial to many.

With the many opportunities and different options that come with digital storytelling, it could be used in many situations. Digital story telling could be used for pleasure reading, as it is now, but it could also be used for educational purposes. Throughout schools around the world, digital stories could be used to learn about other cultures first hand. If someone from a different country posts a story, at any time it could be available to people in the U.S. With this option, it provides a broad horizon of learning experiences that may not have been available before.

I really enjoyed learning about digital stories and interacting with them as well. Using technology to benefit others around the world is the best way it could be used. Hopefully the potential of digital storytelling is recognized by others and someday reached. There are endless possibilities once people start exploring and using technology, especially when it is being used in a good way.

    

    Digital Story Telling is the Future of All Great Works

     I thoroughly enjoyed the blog project.   It gave me a chance to meet other people in the class and express my ideas in a medium that gives me an audience.  I really enjoyed the format of the project.  It gave me freedom to explore and expand my ideas in any direction I want to while using the previous group to kick start our story.  Digital medium lets you share your work with countless people and employ a number of tactics that cannot be used in verbal story telling or in written works.

    For our section of the story, we took the perspective of another character in the story.  It allowed us to create a totally new story, while still keeping with the plot of the original story.  At the end of our story, the first groups story is then intertwined as we tell the reader that the characters are both part of the same story.  By telling it from multiple perspectives the reader gets a fuller picture and better understanding.  It also makes for a very intriguing tale for the reader. 

     Digital story telling is the way of the future.  It is an excellent way to organize thoughts and ideas for a story, since in verbal storytelling, it is often more difficult to edit yourself if you misspeak or leave out a section of a story.  This can cause great difficulty for the listener, since they are missing crucial information regarding the story.  Verbal story telling also has a more limited audience.  Verbal stories are often only heard by the people close enough to the storyteller to hear them.  However, verbal stories car reach a larger audience when broadcast over the radio.  Today’s audience is more interested in music, unlike the older generation who would gather around the radio to listen to stories that were broadcast over the radio and captured the world’s attention.

     Written storytelling rivals digital storytelling, but they are not equal.  When conveying your story through written text you can edit, but with more difficulty.  It requires you to re-write entire pages or even the entire work, which can be a lengthy task when using paper and pen.  Written material has great importance and has been successfully used to disseminate information for ages.  Written material can often have a more limited audience since printing is more expensive and thus wealth becomes a factor in who the audience is.  The first printing press, enabled the written bible to be read by countless people.  The value of hand written stories cannot be overlooked, but its inferiority to digital storytelling cannot be overlooked either.

     Digital story telling is here and it is the future of all storytelling.  It enables a person to create a work and quickly and effortlessly edit the work to perfection.  Through digital storytelling we can also use tactics that are not available in verbal or written storytelling such as hyperlinking.  Hyperlinking adds tremendous value to a digital story by making it interactive and adding context clues by added images to give the reader a clear and concise idea of the author’s direction.  The best thing about digital story telling is how it can give your work an audience of enormous magnitude in a matter of seconds.  Verbal and written methods both have their place in history and storytelling, but it leaves no doubt in my mind that digital story telling is supreme to both of them.   Its fast editing, interactivity, and giant prospective audience makes it a clear choice for storytelling. 

My new learning experiences

My new learning experiences:

​I am a big fan of blog, I read and follow blogs a lot. Although I am a big fan of blogs unfortunately I don’t have one on my own. I am looking forward to create one someday. Throughout the process of writing in our digital storytelling project I found the story become more interesting, one group after another. As I am not a native speaker of English, sometimes Ifind it difficult to write an excellent essay. I admit that I am not proficient and need to learn and practice more to perform well in this class.

In my opinion, the digital storytelling assignment project being assigned is such an interactive way of learning. Everything looks simple and easy to handle by  using the Google site or even the blogger. Everything seems interconnected with each other and makes  writing more interesting. I did not even realize that a blog can be a part of a class assignment. Maybe people who live in states is used to this kind of learning, but this is brand new for me. I am feeling lucky to be introduced to this method of learning. This method of storytelling is very reachable and allows two way communication between the writer and the readers through the comment section and such. Hence, this enables the writer to get a very quick response from the reader either it is good or bad.

As for the research paper, I am still working on mine. Working on the secondary sources to find information to  support my argument is not that easy. At first I thought that the book that I borrowed from the library going to help me a lot, unfortunately it didn’t, luckily I found one  earlier this week and I see hope in it. I am still working on it and hopefully I can come out with a good research paper. I really hope that everyone in the class  can assist me, especially in  my writing because I am not so good in writing. I am too worried when it comes to essay writing and such. Hopefully we can work together.