50+ Web Ways to Tell a Story Done One New Way

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine

My second day at Skidmore College this week was set to do a workshop; I offered to do a version of 50 Web Ways to Tell a Story planning to tap into for the first time the new collection of mobile apps I am working on with help from Darren Kuropatwa.

The idea for the workshop came right from the semi-weekly video chats I have with Darren– the material bits are at http://50ways.wikispaces.com/Skidmore+Storytelling.

About 20 showed up, faculty and staff not only from Skidmore College, but also from the “New York 6“, Union College and Hamilton College, and Colgate University I believe were represented. As I prefer to start with an activity, I relied on the trusty pechaflickr but for a very good reason. I set it up for a round where each person would go once. The tag choice is the fun part, and we had one that generated perhaps some of the best (meaning outlandish) images

@geoparadigm that lgbt leprechaun slide was perhaps the most original pechaflickr improve ever

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) March 19, 2014

Following the story and overview of the site, I introduced was a first time activity that I cam super pleased with (starting with (c) at http://50ways.wikispaces.com/Skidmore+Storytelling).

They formed 4 groups of 4-5 people. Each group was tasked to watch a round of pechflickr with 5 images, up for 30 seconds each- the room agreed on the tag “Creativity” for every one to use. The first round was for people individually to write the outline of a story that is based on the 5 images. Then as a group, they shared and were asked to come up with a group story that they would work on. The plan was to put their idea in shared Google doc, do some searches on media to add, and then ask people to on their open create a story with different tools.

That grand plan was to see what happened when people tell the same story in different tools.

It did not quite go that way… and i ma glad. The groups really got into the discussion of the story idea, they used the story spine in the doc to make a shape of the story

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine

And they preferred to collaborate as a group on doing stories together. I cannot argue with that. In fact, they spent just about all the time on the story process, and did not even get to the tools. Here’s a bit of the sound of the room:

One group did go that far, and even did somerging I never thought off; the used Balabberize for one part, exported it as a movie, and imported that into an animoto – two tools in one story.

Argh Animoto only gives you embed code for your own movie? Sigh. Go watch Group 3’s production http://animoto.com/play/I1NvtkdZK1x6vlXjq8YBpg

That is a win in my book- spending the time on developing the story over tool fiddling.

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine