Techszewski

Anonymity

According to the site stats on this blog, I get 10.95 visitors per day with a total of 1018 hits since I started blogging a few months ago. Yet, I have an emabarrassing SEVEN comments. So, I guess I can say whatever I want here and feel secure that I'm not risking alienating my audience. Blogs give volume to voices often stifled for a variety of reasons, but if nobody is listening it's a bit disheartening. I don't think my blog has anything unique to say that people are going to be flocking to, but it's sort of like throwing a party that no one comes to. The bottom line in blogging is that you have to have something to say and it has to be honest, unfiltered, unique. I've got lots to say about technology and storytelling, that's my other blog - teach story. It needs some work.

I was reading some great blogs this weekend. I Googled 'black bloggers' for some research on racial and ethnic online communities and found exactly what I was looking for - diverse voices on the web, the beginning of the 'brownifying' of the Internet. Hope that mainstream media will always have independant media to keep it in check or at least say 'Wait a minute, something's missing in this story.' The way blogs are spreading and increasing the representation of people of color on the web is amazing. They are sharp contrast to the corporate backed sites like blackplanet.com and asianavenue.com.

Check 'em out.

Quick Post

This is a test of the QuickPost option. I'm hoping it will be a way for the students to easily post to the teach story blog.

Branching Out

I can' t decide if I should start a new blog. My original blog was meant to track my experiences of going back to grad school to become more proficient as a digital designer and practictioner. Now, I feel like I have a focus on 'story' and want to create a blog that deals specifically with story in the digital age. In some ways, a blog is a good way to keep track of a thesis or dissertation, especially if you're working on an idea over a period of time. I guess that's what's encouraging me to create a new blog, to have a space to explore all of my story ideas. I'm worried though that if I start a new blog how will I manage more than one blog. I still don't know how people read more than one blog, but blogging daily is a real challenge.

Blog on! I'll create another blog - teach story. That's going to be the name of my web site also. I was sketching out my site for my Visual Culture and Design final project last night. I decided that a chalkboard motif will work best for the design metaphor. It conveys my teaching background. On the chalkboard, it will say in 'teach story' and then under the Agenda off to the right it will say my story, resume, contact. my story will be my portfolio, which I'm going to do as a choose your own adventure story. I might add something to the chalkboarrd to convey a digital storytelling emphasis, maybe a chord coming out of the side of the chalkboard or a maybe another layer behind it showing a circuit board. Either way, the hardest thing will be deciding if I should try and do this in Flash or just stick with Dreamweaver. I don't know either them well, so it's going to be hard either road I travel.

In Search of

That was a great show. Leonard Nemoy playing host to a field trip to the unknown. You'd never get that on the air these days. People don't really want to think while watching television.

I googled 'multimedia storytelling,' 'interactive stoytelling,' and 'digital storytelling' today while putting in my GRA hours. Lots o' stuff. Here's what I found in order of importance to me:

Defining Multimedia Storytelling - great dialogue among MIT folks
Language and Conversation in Multimedia Storytelling - This guy is one techno-teacher. I got to meet him.
Historical Photographs and Multimedia Storytelling - I've got an interest in documentary film so this fit.
Storytelling On-line - Just the tip of the iceberg when you think about how story is shared via the web.
Storyvine - digital storytelling blog
Elements of Digital Storytelling - great overview, not fully functional, but that may be a php thing.
Erasmatazz Interactive Storytelling Technology - this guy has a great idea, don't know if it worked, came out in '98.
Mountain Workshops - this is more photojournalism, but that's still digital storytelling.
Digital Storytelling Finds Its Place in the Classroom - I had to include this. I wrote this a few years ago and I'm amazed at how many syllabi it turns up on when I'm googling 'digital storytelling'
Interactive Storytelling for Kids - this is mostly Choose Your Own Adventure stuff, but it's relevant for edu-tech.
Mutlimedia Storytelling makes it to PBS - this is as close as DS has made it to mainstream media
On-line Story forms - mostly how news is shared via multimedia