DS: It's Not Just For Breakfast Anymore

One of the things I've been struck by so far in this class is just how many different ways there are to use digital storytelling. Even if you just focus on educational uses, and eliminate all the "I set my parent's wedding photos to Wind Beneath My Wings and emailed it to them for their anniversary" or the "I set pictures of my dog licking himself to a Weird Al medley" kind of uses, there's a lot left to think about.

I think the most obvious thing people think of, or at least the first thing I thought of, was "I can make a digital story for my learners to watch." This is a good way to totally control your content, make it fun, be visually compelling, and so on. Sharing these curriculum products with others and creating libraries, perhaps with ratings, could be a very powerful tool. Anyone who is an expert, or funny, or artistic, can make a DS to share with anyone else, and in time you'd be able to find almost anything you'd want or need, for free...and if you couldn't, you could make it yourself.

I new am beginning to think, though, that the more intriguing way to use DS is to have the learners be the ones creating the story. Having learners think through a topic in enough detail to present a DS to classmates is a sure way for them to learn it well...and then their classmates will benefit as well. I know that the DS's I did in the past taught me a lot about the topic, not just about how to use DS. DS could be done individually, or in groups, to present units on almost any topic. Thinking about psychiatric education specifically, this has great potential, given the myriad pop-culture and real-life media available for use in the stories.

Then there's the idea of using DS for social change, as I discuss on the course discussion blog. One of the sites, Zero Divide, talks about teaching DS to lower SES kids to bridge the "digital divide" between rich and poor, and maybe they're onto something there. This has me thinking about ways of using DS to tell patient stories (meaning, to have patients or family members using DS). I think this could be very powerful, but would require careful thought to respect confidentiality and avoid any type of exploitation.