Toward a Theory of Story for Digital Storytelling R. Lester Walsh rob.walsh@vcsu.edu Dale Y. Hoskisson dale.hoskisson@vcsu.edu Valley City State University USA Abstract: Digital storytelling has the power to transform learners. This transformation occurs through the intersection of self and technology. This paper examines the role of digital storytelling strategies to create a space in which the student can learn, heal, and create. What learners appear to gain from the preparation and delivery of digital storytelling can only be described as therapeutic. The larger implications within adult education for these findings are approaches to teaching and learning that connect learners to their own lives and to the processes that lead to their productive participation within society. Introduction to Story For time untold, stories have provided entertainment and conveyed information. Ancient manuscripts such as the Bible (1979) and the Qur’an (1997) are replete with narrative. For example, the story of Adam and Eve, found in both texts, buoy archetypes within the collective unconscious. These archetypes reinforce ideas about the human condition such as the origin of sin, the existence of evil, and gender superiority. Creation myths are among the earliest of recorded stories. Storytelling is, arguably, the oldest form of education. Maguire (1985) elucidates the value of storytelling as a means to relate to and build upon a sense of trust, particularly between a child and an adult. The mechanism of narrative bridges a generational gap, reassuring a child that the adult can grasp her thoughts and feelings. Storytelling develops the “minds eye,” cultivating attention span and retention capacity and making vocabulary come alive. Roger Shank (nd) engages the power of narration through his story-centered curriculum (SCC). He explains that a good curriculum tells a story and that good education is built on stories. Through narratives, a learner can participate in and feel deeply about what he is learning. A well-constructed SCC is composed of real-life situations that include the bulk of the work that the students do and a series of events that occasionally interrupt or enhance those activities. The Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt University created a series of video discs for math instruction. The adventures are written like good detective novels with all the data necessary to solve the adventure (plus additional data that are not relevant to the solution) embedded in the story. They rely in the power of story to hook the students and keep them interested (Jasper, nd). The means of presenting a story has evolved from the individual raconteur to troupes of players to the written word to brightly colored illustrations to film and video to the current digital age and digital storytelling. What is Digital Storytelling? Digital storytelling is a technical advancement of the “mind’s eye.” Lowenthal and Dunlap (2010) define digital storytelling as a narrative told in digital format that shares a point of view, often the teller’s point of view. The University of Houston’s Uses of Digital Storytelling depicts this technology as using computer-based tools to tell stories, including a combination of digital photos and images, text, audio narration, video clips and music. Daniel Meadows, British photographer and digital storyteller, defines digital storytelling as personalized multimedia tales told from the heart. Meadows suggests that the beauty of digital storytelling is that people anywhere can create and share them with the world (University of Houston, nd). The popularity of digital storytelling has increased in the last two decades. Digital storytelling is used around the world (Yuksel, Robin & McNeil, 2011). The 5th International Digital Storytelling Conference and Exhibition will be hosted by Hacettepe University, Faculty of Communication, in Ankara, Turkey in May, 2013. The previous conference was held in Lillehammer, Norway. Robin (2006) has classified digital storytelling into three categories—personal narratives, stories that examine historical events, and stories that are primarily used to inform or instruct. It is little wonder that digital storytelling is being used in various fields: non-profit development (SocialBrite, nd), corporate training (Arbinger Institute, 2010), and education (Robin & McNeil, 2012). The Theory of Story for Digital Storytelling Traditional storytelling assists a learner to visualize like a media screen, creating a learning environment in living color (Wellik, n.d.). Digital storytelling makes the media screen a central part of the story event. Digital storytelling, as a language tool, is a profoundly effective as a teaching tool. The transderivational role that digital storytelling plays in re-call actuates a whole body response to learning. Narratives can ensure retention of the process and outcome of learning, playing a critical role in the success of specific learning environments. Combining digital storytelling in learning environments conveys students into four cycles of awareness germane to captivating their attention. These awareness cycles include the following: Private planning and gathering thoughts. Portray the giant. Hold personal contact. Take in the entire audience. Each cycle warrants explanation to illustrate how depictive approaches to teaching can impact speakers and listeners. Private Planning and Thought Gathering Learners live inside narratives: “To be a person is to have a story to tell” (Keen & Valley-Fox, p. 8). Being as narrative portends a linguistic phenomenology. Yet learners don’t naturally realize that knowledge of self and the capacity for language are singular. Language is to humans as water is to fish or air is to birds. Therefore, a would-be digital storyteller must first extricate the self from the automation of internal dialogue. Simultaneously, she must intuit this truism: “Every person is plural. There is no I without we. Each of us was shaped by a social group” (Keen et al., p. 9). So then, selfhood is dependent upon language, but identity is dependent on a social construction: “There is no psychology without sociology” (p. 9). Both genuflect to philosophy, and philosophy kneels before story. The irony of planning and gathering thoughts is the understanding of the dualistic yet monist self yet other occurring simultaneously. This insight is the beginning place for the digital minstrel. Adults who cannot escape the gravitational pull of the wounded child “face the world in bewilderment because of their psychic poverty and lack of ability to imagine alternative pathways to move ahead” (Hill, p. 10). Stories, Hill suggested, occur within archetypes of the human condition such that the feeling and resonance of a story is an a priori collective (p. 11). The maturing storyteller apprehends that digital stories need time and characters and imagination and emotion and rhythm and repetition and tone. The skilled raconteur becomes the characters as an extension of personal power. In this critical first stage, the reflective digital story-preparer will decide on the purpose of the story by envisioning the audience and imagining the final outcome. Then, she will break the story into short, manageable episodes. Doing so will aid in retention, and the unnecessary parts of the story can be jettisoned. Moving from story-preparer to digital storyteller can begin by using the simplest technologies at learners’ fingertips to bridge the episodes together. Portraying the Giant As the digital craftsperson weaves the tale, the audience is held spellbound. The storyteller becomes aware of her own power—the power of legerdemain. The narrator, through the technology’s slight of hand, disappears and the characters appear, an embodiment of Buber’s transformation of I – Thou from the separate self to the existence inside an electronic relationship without bounds. This subject-to-subject relationship is a unity of being (Buber, p. 13). Digital stories bring people together and hold people together to share a common humanity. Digital stories are a vehicle to awareness. In any storytelling venture, persistent memory is access to personal mythology. These reclaimed memories are recollections that return from time-to-time as a reminder about past occurrences. These remembrances are a creative force because they are the genesis of personal power yet unaware, a metamorphosis in embryo. Recognizing seemingly disparate, yet transformative, events are valuable insights: they may signal an opportunity for healing. Healing is a gravitational force, a doorway to communicatae, from the Latin “to participate with.” Where the person requires healing, she lacks participation. To participate is to be healthy within the triangulation of mind, body, and essence (Caplan & Caplan, p. 61-66). Is there a more salient means to prove participation than to take in the story of another and to share one’s own? Digital storytelling, then, is the cornerstone of the teaching profession with three central purposes: to teach, to heal, and to entertain (Zabel, p. 32-33). To do the latter well, the digital storyteller must portray the giant. When the storyteller becomes the characters, she becomes the giant and offers passage by which the characters emerge while the storyteller disappears right before the eyes of the audience. Into imagination, portraying the giant is the selfless act in which the digital storyteller forgets herself for the benefit of participation. Portraying the giant begins with choosing stories or versions of stories that are compelling and comfortable for the teller and the audience. For stories that are borrowed, permission should be sought. Pacing must be practiced to avoid speaking too slow or too fast. Beginning storytellers, like neophyte public speakers, often deliver too rapidly, thinking they will forget their story. A device to slow the mind is to “see the images in your head before you speak them to your audience” (Buvala, p. 17). However, balance is important. Some beginners lather on too much paint rather than allow the audience’s imagination to do its share of the work. The audience must be lured, and perhaps the most obvious talisman to gather imagination is the use of voice. Inflection is a powerful technique to audience intrigue. Consider the implications of adjusting the inflection in the following sentence: Statement I didn't say Minni stole my blue pen. I didn't say Minni stole my blue pen. I didn't say Minni stole my blue pen. I didn't say Minni stole my blue pen. I didn't say Minni stole my blue pen. I didn't say Minni stole my blue pen. I didn't say Minni stole my blue pen. I didn't say Minni stole my blue pen. Implication Someone else said it. Strong denial of having said it. I didn’t say it; I wrote it! Someone else stole it. She did something else with it. She stole someone else's pen. She stole one of another color. She stole something else blue. (timelessteacherstuff.com, n.d.) Digital storytellers are charged to attend to the technology used and to be mindful of the way language is wielded. Giants express emotions. Storytellers should too. Keen and Valley-Fox (1989) were frank about the link between squelched social interaction and mental and physical health: “Psychological research suggests that the people most predisposed to develop cancer are those who fail to express their emotions” (p. 10). The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) levels insights into the collaborative effort of storytelling and emotions: Both tellers and listeners find reflections of themselves in stories. Through the language of symbol, children and adults can act out through a story the fears and understandings not so easily expressed in everyday talk. Story characters represent the best and worst in humans. By exploring story territory orally, we explore ourselves…teachers can learn a great deal about themselves. (NCTE, n.d.) Portraying the giant resonates within a sequence of holism, a yin and yang of digital storyteller and of audience. Hold Personal Contact Anyone who has access to language and access to technology can create digital stories, but creating pictures in the mind so these images can be relayed electronically to connect with an audience requires initiative and strategy. The storyteller needs her audience. The energy of the audience fuels the stories forward and may even instruct her in a choice of material. The authentic storytelling experience becomes a meditation for both the listener and the storyteller. Antecedent psychologists such as Freud and Jung knew the power of stories to bridge dissociations caused by neglect or trauma. Einstein also understood the power of language to affect liberty. He proclaimed, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them” (Covey, p. 42). Complete abolition from the self may not be possible, but boundaries for self-disclosure can be established through digital stories. At the source of digital storytelling is the dervish, the blending of thought and technology. Take in the Entire Audience By engaging the entire audience, the digital storyteller must use deliberate methodology. For example, compelling imagines that catch the eye will set the stage for the entire event. Prentice digital storytellers may tend to use imagery in a predictable pattern. Savvy storytellers ensure combining imagery that illustrate and language that generate to engage their entire audience. Generating Stories for Social Interaction Stories emerge from three patterns within the nature of reality: surviving, adjusting, and encountering. Stories of struggle are a catalyst for change and the strength to transform. Freud’s deep understanding of this paradigm led to the enmeshment of Greek mythology into his theories as a means for intuiting the depth of the subconscious mind—his gift via Schelling to Western thought. [Source?] From the Oedipal Complex to the Narcissus Complex, Freud provided the doorway to symbols through narrative. He understood implicitly that habits are borne out of urge to survive. The need to survive occurs through instinct in animals but through stories in humans. The hero or heroine’s journey is a dynamic source for rich and powerful stories (Bristow, p. 18). And by working in the third person, the digital storyteller manages survival sans anxiety (p. 19). Survival stories bring people together and hold people together by sharing a common humanity. Survival stories teach. Digital storytelling as adjustment has the timbre of healing. Many adjustment stories contain a message, a lesson learned. Adjustment stories may begin as persistent memories, but within the context of the story, the memory is a butterfly suddenly appeared for the first time as it flutters in the garden of the mind as it had done unnoticed over the seasons of time. The digital story creates a bridge of language to expanse over the silence that has been the inexorable jailor. A life story stays the same until it is told out loud (Satir, 1994). Because humans survive trauma through dissociation, digital stories create access to overcoming intrapersonal obstacles. The digital storyteller should be forewarned: success in adjustment comes at a price, and that price is discomfort. Convictions are both bonds and bindery. Adjustment stories heal. Stories as encounters are those which lead to what Abraham Maslow referred to as selfactualization. Encountering life is synonymous with departure. A Maslow assertion illustrates this journey to awareness: “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail” (Maslow, p. 15). The digital storyteller who encounters also creates, and through the story the teller has a structure and a means. In other words, this storyteller is at the center of cause rather than situated at the din of effect. The locus of control shifts to collaboration in which the raconteur can check the reality of self and others in any given situation. Whether through pre-cognition or pre-consciousness, the sub-conscious mind knows how to be connected and how to be part of a relationship (Richo, p. 57). Digital stories become a way to establish boundaries for self-disclosure to maintain connections that build rapport and sustainability. Encounter stories create. Conclusion To create digital stories, the storyteller recaptures memory. Recall is, given time’s arrow, transderivational, yet learners encounter what they need through story. Listeners are engaged with both known and new understandings of language and technology through narrative. New words build new contexts. Through the construction of digital storytelling, the learner first notices and then becomes aware of her own process as subtle as this moral code is. Educators have a tremendous ally in digital storytelling. 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