Libraries should embrace digital storytelling

7th February 2006

posted in digitalstorytelling |

Thomas Frey, Executive Director of the DaVinci Institute (a futurist think tank), writes about 10 definers that are shaping the 21st century library in his article, “The Future of Libraries: Beginning the Great Transformation.”

His 9th trend, that “We are transitioning from a product-based economy to an experience based economy” is interesting. I am not sure marketers agree and have heard this, but perhaps I am wrong. I wonder how many advertisements we see today are marketing more toward creating a perception of “an experience” that people want to be a part of, rather than marketing the specifics of a particular product?

My favorite recommendation of Frey’s in his list of four at the end of the article involves oral history and digital storytelling. Frey writes that libraries and those in communities which have libraries should:

Preserve the memories of your own communities. While most libraries have become the document archive of their community, the memories of a community span much more than just documents. What did it sound like to drive down Main Street in 1950? What did it smell like to walk into Joe’s Bakery in the early mornings of 1965? Who are the people in these community photos and why were they important? Memories come in many shapes and forms. Don’t let yours disappear.

To me, this sounds precisely like a call for digital storytelling, similar to the one I shared in the podcast presentation “The Case for Digital Storytelling.” Frey is right on the money with this recommendation. We need to get students of all ages involved in digital storytelling and preserving local history via the stories of our family members and neighbors.

Our brains are hard wired to listen to stories and hear stories. We remember stories. This is more important than “school accountability” and test scores. This is about preserving history, and making new memories in the minds of the young from the rich experiences still accessible in the minds of the old. Digital storytelling is not a panacea for all that ails us in education, but it certainly is an engaging activity with robust instrumental as well as intrinsic value. Tomorrow in my presentation, “Cultivating Digital Literacy Through Blogging and Podcasting” here at TCEA 2006 in Austin, I’ll be addressing the need to develop 21st century literacy skills.

Digital storytelling provides the ideal platform for the development of those skills. If you are interested in engaging in dialog with other educators passionate about digital storytelling, I invite you to join the discussion in the SITE Digital Storytelling blog.

On this day..

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2006 at 8:42 pm and is filed under digitalstorytelling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1 On February 8th, 2006, Christopher Harris said:

The Frey article is great, and I agree that libraries (school libraries in my case) need to keep looking forward to what is coming. Given that, what would you recommend for geting started with digital storytelling?

I would love to explore how this might complement the traditional storytelling festival my library system has sponsored for the last 20 years.

Chris

2 On February 11th, 2006, Wesley Fryer said:

I think an oral history project as a research project is a great way to get students and teachers involved in digital storytelling. One of my biggest “takeaways” from the TCEA conference this year was the idea that people interested in helping teachers use technology more effectively need to stop talking so much about technology– and just talk about the basic outcomes they are working towards more: getting students to be better writers, better readers, better communicators, collaborators, etc. I would recommend a day of staff development on your campus focused on digital storytelling. Start with watching together some excellent examples, and talking about what made them effective or not. The Center for Digital Storytelling’s resource page can provide useful starting points. Then have teachers work in teams to create a short 3-5 minute story. Then share the results and celebrate.

If we want teachers to do activities involving digital storytelling with their students, then I think we need to help them have experiences as students themselves (or at least in that role) doing digital storytelling. If you move forward on this please let me know. Digital stories can be put together with free software like PhotoStory3 or iMovie.