Building Empowered Communities with Digital Storytelling

As we continue teaching our fully online Digital Storytelling course as an international collaboration, we share our latest reflections and insights as part of our zoom recording. Although this was recorded for our course, it provides you with a unique perspective on where we are in the class, how we are teaching it, and what we value as co-teachers in this environment. In this week’s Zoom dialogue we talk about the importance of building a collaborative online community, encourage learners to find their voices in the online discussions, and explore the importance of digital ethics when producing information as a digital storyteller! If you are an experienced online instructor, new to online, multimodal, or remote learning, or if your are interested in teaching digital storytelling, we hope you enjoy our latest conversation as much as we did!

(click on the image to see the video)

Window-View and Reflective Digital Stories

The first assignment in our fully online Digital Storytelling course at SUNY Empire State College requires students to create a “selfie-video” to introduce themselves to the class. The selfie-videos created by students were so inspiring we decided, as co-instructors, to develop our own visual narratives.

In Prague Through My Lens, Dr. Sheila Aird takes us on a journey through the beautiful city of Prague, Czech Republic with this window-view digital story.

Prague Through My Lens

In An Albany Story, Dr. Tom Mackey shares a few landmarks from Albany, the Capital City of New York State, with this reflective memory digital story.

This approach is an excellent way to see and hear from everyone in the course and to establish the art of digital storytelling because we move beyond text and static “selfie” pictures to communicate with digital media. Since this international collaboration extends from the United States, to Prague, Czech Republic, to Tirana Albania, this assignment is a dynamic introduction to everyone in class.

As we say in our course video Telling Your Digital Story, everyone has a digital story to tell, what’s yours?

Envisioning Your Digital Stories

As our global digital storytelling collaboration continues, we share our thoughts about the first few weeks of class and offer suggestions for script writing and storyboarding as part of the process. We share our thoughts about Envisioning Your Digital Stories during this interactive Zoom call that we prepared and recorded for students in our fully online Digital Storytelling course at SUNY Empire State College. As part of this week’s call, we also discuss the value of collaboration and peer review. At this point in the course, students have introduced themselves through original selfie-videos and are sharing their insights about defining the topic of digital storytelling itself. The concept of metaliteracy is introduced so that students start to see how being a digital storyteller relates to becoming a responsible and creative producer of information.
-Prof. Aird & Prof. Mackey

Telling Your Digital Stories

Dr. Sheila Aird and Dr. Tom Mackey in Prague, Czech Republic

Welcome to this international collaboration that brings together students from Prague, Czech Republic and the United States through Digital Storytelling! This fall 2020 session of the fully online Digital Storytelling course at SUNY Empire State College is taught by Dr. Sheila Marie Aird, Associate Professor and Center for International Education Director for Prague, Czech Republic and Dr. Tom Mackey, Professor of Arts and Media in the School of Arts and Humanities.

This blog will feature digital stories, podcasts, and postings that provide insights and updates about this virtual collaboration as we move forward together. For this first week, check out our course introduction recorded via Zoom from Prague and New York! We hope that you begin to follow this blog and offer your own insights about telling your own digital stories.