Week 8 Reading: Digital Storytelling

I like this book named The New Digital Storytelling. Author Bryan Alexander explains his insights of the development of storytelling for the twenty-first century. The book was published in 2011.

The key point of a story is the theme. The meaning of a story. culture, events, emotion, characters, micro-content anecdotes. An approach to describe the meaning is to focus on a struggle problem or crisis, especially historical or personal one. Problem-based storytelling is a popular model in the literature. It includes “Central challenge”, “Characters change”, “Resolution events”.

New digital storytelling use personal video, blogs, mobile apps, digital imagery, social media, podcasts, multimedia games, and extensive platforms to create interactive mythic and everyday life changing experiences.

It is good rule for you know your audience. What is the emotional engagement and critical meaning. writer need build story through the cyber culture.The digital technology all help connect artifacts relationship to the theme, characters, cultures. and draw the audiences participant into the creative spirit together.The digital storytelling will close to the heart of universal human culture.

I am strong agree with the opinion of gaming in the book. I quote below because I like this confusion. recently I was a bit shake with some critical, open-end games, and I predicate the innovation and insights.

The serious games model appeared roughly around 2001, in an attempt to distinguish a certain style of game as being engaged with art or politics. Michigan State University’s academic program on the field offers a representative description: “Serious games are games with purpose beyond just providing entertainment. Examples include, but are not limited to, games for learning, games for health, and games for policy and social change.” From the creation side of gaming comes a different description: “Designing effective, engaging serious games requires theoretical understanding of learning, cognition, emotion, and play.” Serious games have also been associated with education, both as objects of study and as a way of thinking about educational gaming.

In new digital storytelling, we use image, sound, interaction with the personal experiences to access the story. Reader also create and contribute the story. We can see readers faces light up with all kinds of emotions of real life.

Reference:

Annette Simmons, The Story Factor: Secrets of Influence from the Art of Storytelling, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 117.