Today is the final day of the remarkable First Person: The International Digital Storytelling Conference co-sponsored by The Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley and by the conference host, The Australian Museum of the Moving Image in Melbourne. First off, I have to say that a blast of Aussie mid-summer has done this Vermont girl a world of good. Add to that this splendid, beautiful city (ah, the parks, the parks!) and the fabulous museum itself–well, this conference has a whole lot going for it without even attending a single session.
But of course the conference itself is wonderful on many, many levels, and as usual, I am learning far more than I am teaching. Leaving my own realm is always inspiring and invigorating–meeting people (most of the conference attendees and speakers come from the Southern Hemisphere) who share the same outlook and hope for the world, who think about education and community very much as I do, and yet bring to the conversation quite a different set of experiences and realities reassures me that this work really is evolving in significant ways. We’ve seen digital storytelling projects in indigenous communities, across the African diaspora, in schools, hospitals–you name it. What connects us all is the sense of the transformative process that digital stories gives us in our work with individuals and communities.
I will post reflections over the next days, as well as my real-time digital story (a twenty-minute digital story played behind me as I narrated it live–yes, I’m crazy, but fortunately it went without a hitch) for my talk yesterday on digital storytelling in higher education (I will post it as a vodcast, I hope), and the notes and slides for my talk today on blogging as community storytelling, but for now, I do want to note a couple of interesting sites and projects people have shared over the past day:
UsMob–a Choose-Your-Own Adventure series meant to honor the voices of Aborigine children as well as to educate all of us.
Youth Internet Radio which connects youth from all over Queensland through radio production.
THE INFLUENCING MACHINE OF MISS NATALIJA A.–check out this artwork.
More to come…
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Christopher D. Sessums :: Weblog ::
Christopher D. Sessums geht der Frage nach, warum er als Professor bloggt und kommt zu interessanten, wenn auch nicht wirklich überraschenden Antworten:
For me, blogging is a social act. I heart connecting with other