On Saturday, I had the privilege of watching the middle and high school interns from the WNY Young Writers’ Studio guide small groups of writers through the next phase of our collaborative digital storytelling project. The last time we met, writers finished story boarding. On Saturday, they came prepared with props and ideas and spent a portion of the morning capturing digital stills. We plan to “wrap this up” at our Celebration of Writing on June 5th at Pinnacle Charter School, where parents and teachers and all other visitors will be invited to watch these writers at work as they create their final products. I’ll be leading a session on digital storytelling that day as well. If you are interested in joining us, you can learn more about the event, including how to register, here.
My big take away from this entire experience took shape during a conversation with a parent, who mentioned that her son (who dislikes writing very much) was loving this project.
“He gets to move around,” she marveled, excited to see the boy (who is all boy, by the way) enjoying himself and learning at the same time.
Writing doesn’t have to be about sitting still and quiet and putting pen to paper. In fact, for many people, it often isn’t. My hunch is that the more we embrace this notion, the better we might be able to engage the writers we assumed were “reluctant.”
Want to learn more about digital storytelling? You can begin by perusing some of these fabulous resources:
- Jennifer Dorman shares an impressive set of digital storytelling resources (and much more) on her wiki, Grazing for Digital Natives.
- Wesley Fryer published these exemplars from his own work with writers.
- Silvia Tolisano has recently gifted all of us with this free resource. Click on that link! You will be glad that you did.
- Jon Orech fueled my learning and provided us some support at the start of our process earlier this year.
- And some of that learning was enriched by these resources, compiled by Dr. Alec Couros at the Open Thinking Wiki.
