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A story has a beginning, a middle, and a cleanly wrapped-up ending. Whether told around a campfire, read from a book, or played on a DVD, a story goes from point A to B and then C. It follows a trajectory, a Freytag Pyramid-perhaps the line of a human life or the stages of the hero's journey. A story is told by one person or by a creative team to an audience that is usually quiet, even receptive. Or at least that's what a story used to be, and that's how a story used to be told. Today, with digital networks and social media, this pattern is changing. Stories now are open-ended, branching, hyperlinked, cross-media, participatory, exploratory, and unpredictable. And they are told in new ways: Web 2.0 storytelling picks up these new types of stories and runs with them, accelerating the pace of creation and participation while revealing new directions for narratives to flow.

One of the key ways by which we make sense of our world is by analysing the stories that we and others use to describe it. These stories are a construct of our experiences, our beliefs, our cultural perspectives and the interactions between these things. Even when the context in which the story is set is the same, the details and nature of the story that particular individuals or collective share can differ vastly. Only by listening to each story with empathy and genuine desire to understand each individual's telling of this story do we develop true insights. Making sense of the stories of education should be a key process for all educators.

Digital publishing tools for creating story books

"You are obsessed with stories. I am obsessed with stories. We are obsessed with stories. Even when you go to sleep at night, your mind stays awake telling itself stories in your dreams.  It's predicted that modern humans began to speak language around 100,000 years ago. It's no great leap of the imagination to assume they started telling stories not long after.  We're obsessed with stories. But why? It's how we make sense of the world. We have a deep neurological compulsion to find patterns. "

"A collection of stories is the way to rewrite a singular history that has been in textbooks....I think it takes a lot of people telling a lot of stories about what their experience has been, what the experience of their ancestors has been." The speaker is Tommy Orange, an Oakland-based media consultant, writer, and digital storyteller who is an enrolled member of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma and describes himself as "a father, a son, a brother, an uncle, a partner, a storyteller, and a committed member and servant of his community." For Issue #3 of The Republic of Stories, our quarterly online publication, Arlene Goldbard interviewed Tommy and Tony Platt, author of books inlcuding Grave Matters: Excavating California's Buried Past, who lives in Berkeley and Big Lagoon, California, and serves as secretary of the Coalition to Protect Yurok Cultural Legacies at O-pyuweg (Big Lagoon).

The Society for Storytelling's annual 'National Storytelling Week' is a wonderful way to kickstart sharing stories and reading in your school. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Competitions+%26+Events

Collaboarative Digital Storytelling

Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories you make to share, read, and print.

Combine your words with high-quality artwork from talented illustrators around the world.

You read a snippet of a story and then you click 'read more' at which time you are presented with unique paths to continue the story. You choose. If you wish you can then add to the story by grafting your own snippet onto the story. Popular snippets get ranked and continue, unpopular snippets disappear.

Digital storytelling tips

"Cowbird is a library of human experience. We are a community of tens of thousands of storytellers, located all over the world. We offer free and simple storytelling tools for anyone to use, combining photos, audio, and text into heartfelt personal vignettes. We've designed Cowbird to reflect the basic truths that all human lives are interconnected, that great stories can come from anywhere, and that we can learn a lot from each other, once we make the time to listen. This is a place to slow down and go deeper - our mission is to build to world's first public library of human experience, so the knowledge and wisdom we accumulate as individuals may live on as a part of the commons, available for this and future generations to look to for guidance."

Meograph helps easily create, watch, and share interactive stories. Our first product combines maps, timeline, links, and multimedia to tell stories in context of where and when.

Create, watch & share stories that combine maps, timelines, links, and media to tell stories in the context of where and when.

A collection of stories read by actors - could be used as a reading center, an alternative to read alouds, or a home alternative for students.

A website made in conjunction with the Screen Actors Guild thaf has famous actors reading a range of picture story books with accompanying pictures from the book. Includes activities to do in class as well.  Needs Flash but you can just go to the YouTube channel to access the stories themselves. http://www.youtube.com/StorylineOnline

Storyline is a website that brings stories to life, it helps that each one is told by a great storyteller.

This site is a collaborative online drawing and animation project from Google and the UK's Tate Modern art gallery. Draw part of a picture and add to other people's creation. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Art%2C+Craft+%26+Design

An online art project developed by Google, this site is a place for digital storytelling through pictures, not words. Students can work collaboratively to create a short animated story, with each animation building off the previous branches. Students can create their own seeds & invite others to grow a tree with them. Before students can create their own seeds, they do have to contribute to an already existing tree. If a student does not feel they can express their words with an animation, think about having the students pair up. Have one student become an author & write an outline of the story, while the other student draws the animation of the story.

A presentation about "Engaging students with literacy to create powerful, rich multimedia stories that bring their writing to life. " Essentially a movie from a Prezi, it guides teachers through 4 different digital storytelling options and why they are important.

blogpost reviewing Meograph, a digital storytelling web tool linking maps, timelines, images/video, and narration.

This site walks you through the process of creating a digital story.

A digital story is created using multimedia it weaves together images, music and voice. It takes the audience on a multi-sensory journey. There are range of applications available to help you make your story:

y StoryMaker lets you control characters and objects - and creates sentences for you! Once you are done with your story, you can print it out. You cannot go back and edit a story once you have ended it but, if you click "yes" when asked to share it with others, you can print it out again by entering the magic number it gives you in the box on the right. Since lack of space forces us to delete story files older than 1 month, please save the .pdf file that prints to your own computer.