story

Storytelling app a hit; launches a new chapter in transmedia — from blogs.vancouversun.com by Gillian Shaw

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Paul Pattison and Luke Minaker knew they were onto something when they got an email from the mother of a nine-year-old who read the first instalment of their interactive story, Weirdwood Manor.

“She wrote that she couldn’t get her son to pick up a book,” said Pattison, technical director of All Play No Work, producer of the iPad app. “She got the app for her son and he went through it in two nights. He finished both books.

“And then because we don’t have book 3 out yet, unprompted by her he went over to the bookshelf and pulled off a paperback and started reading chapter books again.”

While the storytelling app had already shot to ‘Best New App’ in Apple’s app store, chalking up 5,000 downloads in the first two weeks after it was released, the realization that it converted a reluctant nine-year-old to an avid reader confirmed for Pattison and Minaker they were on the right track.

“It is a common theme we have been hearing,” said Pattison. “They get to this age range of eight to 12 and they stop being interested in reading. Video games, Snapchat – all these other things dominate.

“Although we’re an app in digital, what we really wanted to do is re-engage kids in reading, tap into their imagination, have them rediscover that.”

tvOS: The days of developing for a “TV”-based OS are now upon us.

On 10/22/2015, in 21st century, 3D, A/V -- audio/visual, adult learning, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Bring your own device (BYOD), change, collaboration, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, convergence, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, digital audio, digital learning, digital photography, digital storytelling, digital textbooks, digital video, disruption, distance education, e-books, education technology, educational games / serious games, elearning, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, entrepreneurship, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), hybrid learning, ideas, informal learning, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, journalism, K-12 related, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, more voice more choice more control, multi-touch, multimedia, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, online media, online tutoring, participation, passions, personalized/customized learning, platforms, play, second screen apps, simulations, smart/connected TV, social learning / networks, story, storytelling, streams of content, student-related, tablets, technologies for your home, telecommunications, telepresence, television, training / L&D, transmedia, trends, user experience (UX), videoconferencing, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, webinars, by Daniel Christian

Apple puts out call for Apple TV apps — from bizjournals.com by Gina Hall

Excerpt:

The company put out the call for app submissions on Wednesday for tvOS. The Apple TV App Store will debut as Apple TV units are shipped out next week.
…
The main attraction of Apple TV is a remote with a glass touch surface and a Siri button that allows users to search by voice. Apple tvOS is capable of running apps ranging from Airbnb to Zillow and games like Crossy Road. Another major perk of Apple TV will be universal search, which allows users to scan for movies and television shows and see results from multiple sources, instead of having to conduct the same search within multiple apps.

Apple CEO Tim Cook hopes the device will simplify how viewers consume content.

From DSC:
The days of developing for a “TV”-based OS are now upon us: tvOS is here. I put “TV” in quotes because what we know of the television in the year 2015 may look entirely different 5-10 years from now.

Once developed, things like lifelong learning, web-based learner profiles, badges and/or certifications, communities of practice, learning hubs, smart classrooms, virtual tutoring, virtual field trips, AI-based digital learning playlists, and more will never be the same again.

Also see:

tvOS for Developers – Apple Developer
An Introduction to tvOS Development — from code.tutsplus.com by Davis Allie

Addendum on 10/26/15:
The article below discusses one piece of the bundle of technologies that I’m trying to get at via my Learning from the Living [Class] Room Vision:

No More Pencils, No More Books — from by Will Oremus
Artificially intelligent software is replacing the textbook—and reshaping American education.
Excerpt:
ALEKS starts everyone at the same point. But from the moment students begin to answer the practice questions that it automatically generates for them, ALEKS’ machine-learning algorithms are analyzing their responses to figure out which concepts they understand and which they don’t. A few wrong answers to a given type of question, and the program may prompt them to read some background materials, watch a short video lecture, or view some hints on what they might be doing wrong. But if they’re breezing through a set of questions on, say, linear inequalities, it may whisk them on to polynomials and factoring. Master that, and ALEKS will ask if they’re ready to take a test. Pass, and they’re on to exponents—unless they’d prefer to take a detour into a different topic, like data analysis and probability. So long as they’ve mastered the prerequisites, which topic comes next is up to them.

Creating Movies With Students — from ipadsammy.com by Jon Samuelson

Excerpt:

“Here’s looking at you, Kid” – Presentation From BSD Future Ready Summit

Getting students started creating videos can seem like a daunting task. There isn’t enough time in the day to get your regular subjects done, how are you supposed to give students time to create videos? I am here to tell you it can be done. I hope that this post/presentation will provide what you need to get started.

Students can create videos on a variety within the context of what they are learning right now. Video story problem for math, a how to science experiment, or a book trailer that covers important story traits are all good ideas. Here is a list of apps, PDF Templates, and equipment that can be helpful when creating movies.

Empowering Students Through Multimedia Storytelling — from edutopia.org by Michael Hernandez

Excerpt:

Recent studies have proven that stories can change perceptions and even make people more tolerant. Rather than wait to be defined by others, it’s important that students learn to create understanding by sharing their story, their worldview, their concerns, and their triumphs with others.

Groups like Youth Radio and Cause Beautiful are empowering teens in poor and minority-majority neighborhoods to become multimedia journalists. Kids in these programs learn how to tell and share their own stories with a local or national audience.

No matter your class demographics or grade level, ELA and social studies teachers should integrate similar projects in their own classrooms, because every student will benefit from learning to craft a compelling visual story backed by persuasive facts and ideas.

What Is Multimedia Storytelling?
Students use video, audio, photography, web, and social media to craft documentaries and nonfiction stories about the world around them. These interdisciplinary projects allow students to focus on creating an authentic product that many people outside the classroom and their neighborhoods will see.

From DSC:
I am passionate about multimedia because the components of it — digital audio, digital video, text, graphics, animations, digital photography, and more — can create hugely powerful pieces of communication. Students need to be able to communicate — online. But it’s not just students. Each one of us needs to have an online-based footprint now in order to remain marketable. Multimedia can help relay our stories, our work, our dreams. It unleashes enormous amounts of energy and creativity inside of us.

I wish that more teachers and faculty members would seek to integrate multimedia-based assignments into their courses — or at least encourage the idea that this can be one of the acceptable ways that assignments can be turned in. At the same time, it can be one of the more interesting ways to assess learning and comprehension. Online-based resources like Lynda.com can help get students, teachers, and professors up the learning curves.

Augmented reality expert explains how AR will help humanity [Hardawar]

On 09/16/2015, in 21st century, Augmented Reality (AR), digital storytelling, education technology, emerging technologies, future, human-computer interaction (HCI), story, storytelling, tools, trends, by Daniel Christian

Augmented reality expert explains how AR will help humanity — from engadget.com by Devindra Hardawar; with thanks to Woontack Woo for his Paper.li piece on this

Excerpt:

We’ve been hearing and seeing plenty about augmented reality these days — from Microsoft’s HoloLens to the mysterious Google-backed startup Magic Leap — but aside from the gee-whiz factor, its benefits can sometimes feel almost as illusory as virtual images. Gaia Dempsey, managing director of DAQRI, which makes an AR-enabled smart hard hat, offers up a strong case for why augmented reality is more than just hype. In a new video for the upcoming Future of Storytelling Summit (which also produced the stunning video of animation legend Glen Keane drawing in VR), Dempsey explains how AR could fundamentally change the way we learn and experience the world. For example, it’s one thing to be told how the mechanics of a clock works in text or video, it’s an entirely different experience to be able to manipulate a moving set of clock gears in three dimensions.

Also see:

Gaia Dempsey – Knowledge Transfer: The Promise of Augmented Reality
2015 Future of StoryTelling Summit Speaker: Gaia Dempsey
Managing Director, DAQRI International
Apply to attend: fost.org

We understand our world through stories. That layer of narrative locks in our experiences, teaching us to remember what we’ve observed. Gaia Dempsey, through her work at DAQRI, has learned that augmented reality doesn’t change that—it just emphasizes it. By applying digital information over the real world, augmented reality allows us to break up what we see into new spaces and interact with them in a new way. Imagine looking at a toolbox and seeing a floating explanation of every tool inside it; or a complex panel of controls overlaid with instructions for exactly how to interact with it, step by step. It’s an incredible new way to learn, to communicate, and to engage. Dempsey will discuss how augmented reality is developing and where it’s heading at this year’s FoST.

Also see:

5 Lessons Learned While Making Lost [Unseld; regards making a VR movie]

On 07/23/2015, in creativity, digital storytelling, media/film, story, storytelling, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, by Daniel Christian

5 Lessons Learned While Making Lost — from oculus.com by Saschka Unseld; this post regards making a VR-based movie

Excerpts:

Don’t rush the pacing
Structuring Lost through thinking of it as “moments” and not “actions” helped find the right pace without losing our story structure.
Respect the ritual of “Settling in & Setting the scene”
Let go of forcing the viewer to look somewhere
Be aware of Spatial Story Density
Simplify scope

We eventually redefined the relationship between storyteller, listener, and the story itself. Even though time for the viewer unfolds in a linear fashion, the discovery of the story might not. This realization, of course, had big implications on staging and timing. It also sparked discussion around something we call “Spatial Story Density”.

Technology and The Evolution of Storytelling [Lasseter]

On 07/01/2015, in digital storytelling, leadership, media/film, multimedia, new media literacies, story, storytelling, technology (general), vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Technology and The Evolution of Storytelling — from medium.com by John Lasseter; with a shout out to The Digital Rocking Chair for the Scoop on this

Excerpts:

“People aren’t going to sit still for a feature-length cartoon. Are you nuts?”

But Walt was a visionary.

Walt saw beyond what people were used to. They were used to the short cartoon.

There’s a famous statement by Henry Ford that before the Model T if you asked people what they wanted, they would say, “A faster horse.”

My own partner at Pixar for 25 years, Steve Jobs, never liked market research. Never did market research for anything.

“It’s not the audience’s job to tell us what they want in the future, it’s for us to tell them what they want in the future.” — Steve Jobs

It was because people didn’t understand what the technology ***could*** do. — John Lasseter

I wanted to learn as much as I could.

The more you dig into the technology and the more you learn it, you are going to get ideas you would never have thought of without knowing your technology.

The goal was to make the technology invisible.

Lance Weiler’s must-read story about the future of storytelling [Smolen]

On 05/21/2015, in collaboration, communications, design, digital storytelling, experimentation, future, higher education, innovation, interactivity, K-12 related, play, story, storytelling, transmedia, using teams, by Daniel Christian

Lance Weiler’s must-read story about the future of storytelling — from kidscreen.com by Wendy Smolen

Excerpt:

As the founder of the Columbia University Digital Storytelling Lab, and its Director of Experiential Learning and Applied Creativity, you’ve convinced some major powers that work and learning begin with a story. What does that mean to those in the industry who make products for kids?

My work at Columbia University explores how story, play and design can be harnessed to create collaborative work and learning environments. A key takeaway from our experiments so far is the value of a diversity of perspectives. We often strive to embrace a designing “with” and “for” methodology. This is a fundamental shift for the entertainment industry but the reality is the audience has evolved into storytellers. They are now their own little media companies able to push-button publish for the world to see.

As creation and consumption blend, story and code continue to collide. At Columbia we are exploring new forms and functions of storytelling. How can stories be used as a discovery method? How can they enable people to connect to the world around them? How can they become a utility that can solve everyday challenges?

Story and Code have different development cycles and require different set of skills. So at Columbia and within my own work I often benefit from assembling a kind of 21st Century Writer’s Room. My core team has expanded to include creative technologists, data researchers and systems designers. What connects the team is a series of stories that we use to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that the core vision and goals are communicated.

…

The Digital Storytelling Lab, therefore, is a place of speculation, of creativity, and of collaboration between students and faculty from across Columbia University. New stories are told here in new and unexpected ways.

Also see:

“The leap from film to VR is even bigger than the leap from radio to film was.”

On 03/27/2015, in change, communications, digital storytelling, drama/theater, ideas, immersion, media/film, story, storytelling, television, user experience (UX), Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, by Daniel Christian

6 ways Virtual Reality will change filmmaking — from indiewire.com by DJ Roller

Excerpt:

From the Chauvet Cave paintings of 30,000 years ago, to 6K digital cinema today, we’ve always told stories, we just do it differently as media changes. There’s a new leap in storytelling happening now. Virtual Reality (VR) is going to change the way we express ourselves, communicate with each other and experience the world. That may sound like hyperbole. If anything it’s an understatement. There are innumerable ways VR will change filmmaking that we can’t see yet. Here are a few changes that have already arrived:

From seeing to experiencing
The leap from film to VR is even bigger than the leap from radio to film was. There was sound, then sight. With VR, an even more immersive sensation is added: presence. People who try it say, “I was at the Golden Gate Bridge,” not, “I saw the Golden Gate Bridge.” They describe it as if they’re there. And with live VR, it’s an almost indescribable sensation of being there. It’s different from VR that’s recorded. People will regard it as an experience they’ve never had before.

…

The leap from film to VR is even bigger than the leap from radio to film was.

Transmedia Literacy: Expanding the Media Literacy Frontier [Rutledge]

On 12/22/2014, in attention, digital storytelling, engagement / engaging students, innovation, new media literacies, participation, psychology, story, storytelling, transmedia, by Daniel Christian

Transmedia Literacy: Expanding the Media Literacy Frontier — from div46amplifier.com by Pamela Rutledge, PhD, MBA; Director, Media Psychology Research Center Adjunct Faculty, Fielding Graduate University

Excerpt:

Media literacy is an increasingly pressing issue for media psychologists and educators who strive to prepare people of all ages to function well in a media-rich, globally connected world. The ever-expanding integration of media technologies in our daily lives, from social media platforms to mobile apps, have challenged our understanding of just what it means to be literate in the 21^st century (Hobbs & Jensen, 2009). The emerging trend of transmedia storytelling will continue to push the envelope even farther. Transmedia storytelling goes beyond the need to segment such skills as search and collaboration. It demands the ability to recognize, understand, and interact with narrative threads across multiple modalities, not just within them.

Transmedia storytelling is the design and distribution of a story that is coordinated across multiple media channels. Each channel offers unique content, using the strengths of each medium to its best advantage to build a larger, richer story. Transmedia storytelling is intentionally designed for participation, drawing the audience in as co-creators to expand and develop the narratives.

Transmedia storytelling may not seem particularly different or profound until you consider that all information is translated into narrative in our meaning-making brains. We embody the stories we tell. Stories are how we assign causality, consciously process sensory input and imagery, and create associations so we can commit experience to memory. Stories are how we make sense of our selves, our lives, and our futures in the world around us (Polkinghorne, 1988).

A smorgasboard of tools [digital storytelling, creating quizzes/polls in class, learning piano, career counseling, VR, & more]

On 11/12/2014, in assessment, creativity, digital storytelling, education technology, educational games / serious games, K-12 related, multimedia, music, story, storytelling, tools, vendors, youth, by Daniel Christian

Digital Storytelling Resources from Classroom 2.0 Live (Oct 2014) — from speedofcreativity.org by Wesley Fryer

Excerpt:

…I facilitated a 60 minute webinar on Classroom 2.0 Live about digital storytelling. This was an “open mic” session, which is similar to facilitated conversations at EdCamps. The webinar is archived on YouTube, and referenced links are included in this LiveBinder.

These are some of the links I saved from the webinar, which were shared by participants. This was an excellent session and I learned about several new resources I’m anxious to try with my own students in digital storytelling projects!

Murmur Project – Toronto (place-based digital storytelling using cell phones for playback)
StoryboardThat – Web-based tool for project storyboarding
BitStrips for Schools – comic -based digital storytelling
Bay Farm School Digital Tour (using QR codes)
6th Grade Roller Coaster Physics Project
Dot Day at Bay Farm Project
Make Beliefs Comix
The Cloud Coaster
City of San Leandro History Walk (A Boy Scout Eagle Project)
Digital Storytelling Pearltrees site by Shelly Terrell
Voki (create speaking avatars)
Morfo (free iOS app to turn a photo into a talking avatar)
Tools for Screen Captures, Digital Storytelling, & Video
Out of Eden Walk

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9 Free Tools For Digital Storytelling — from hongkiat.com by Fahad Khan

Excerpt from How Can English Teachers Benefit from Digital Storytelling Tools — from edtechreview.com by Prasanna Bharti

Digital Storytelling Tools for Students

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Creative storytelling with Storehouse — from blogs.elon.edu by Analise Godfrey (Storehouse was created by former Apple User Experience Evangelist, Mark Kawano)

.

Over 40 web tools to create quizzes and polls in class — from educatorstechnology.com

.

Theia
Introducing a new and exciting world view, Theia smart glasses naturally integrate augmented reality together with your reality using unique technology and seamless design.

.

Platform lets users share documents with real-time audio comments — from springwise.com
Blrt is offering both real-time and anytime sharing of documents, with integrated drawing and voice commenting tools.

Excerpt:

The platforms that businesses most commonly use to communicate with both colleagues and clients — phone, email, face-to-face meetings and video chat — are typically only used one at a time. If it’s just a quick chat, you pick up the phone, if you need to send a document you send an email. But is there a way to make multimedia collaboration more seamless through a single platform? We recently wrote about Talko, which aims to make voice calls more like emails. Now a similar service, Blrt, is offering both real-time and anytime sharing of documents, with integrated drawing and voice commenting tools.

10 great iPad apps for teaching and learning piano — from educatorstechnology.com

Circle of Fifths – music theory reference

Osmo

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30 Ways Google Glass Works in Classrooms [#Infographic] — from edtechmagazine.com by D. Frank Smith
From allowing student to connect virtually with peers and teachers to helping identify learning difficulties, the wearable tech has clear potential as an aid.

An App to Make Career Counseling More Like a Video Game — from chronicle.com by Rebecca Koenig

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Microsoft Research gives us a glimpse of future gaming with RoomAlive — from InterestingEngineering.com

.

LinkedIn Introduces New Tools for Students Choosing Universities — from eduniverse.org by Philippe Taza

Excerpt:

Regardless of whether you agree with their criteria or the general practice of creating rankings, their newest initiative is undoubtedly an impressive leveraging of Big Data, applying complex algorithms to LinkedIn’s vast database of 313 million users to derive interesting conclusions for both students and those marketing higher education.

Lync to Become Skype for Business — from MikeBrandesAV.com

Excerpt:

Microsoft is rebranding it’s unified communication platform Microsoft Lync. Microsoft plans to retool their approach to unified communications, and launch under the name “Skype for Business” in 2015. Microsoft originally acquired Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011.

The Redmond, WA based software giant made significant strides into the Unified Communications space, offering a cost-competitive unified communications platform which included Telephony, Chat, Collaboration and Video Conferencing all from the desktop, laptop or tablet.

The 10 best creative apps for tablets — from Creative Bloq

Excerpt:

Over recent years, many great drawing and painting apps have become available for tablets and smart phones. Here’s our pick of the most comprehensive packages on the market.

ArtRage

This clever app scans and solves maths problems instantly using your phone’s camera — from businessinsider.com.au

Excerpt:

While it seems likely that most will use PhotoMath to sidestep actual learning, PhotoMath includes a “Steps” button that cleverly walks you through the steps from the original equation to the final answer.

Addendum on 11/2014 — some music-related apps from the November 2014 edition of The Journal:

Team-based content creation/delivery is pulling ahead of the pack!

On 11/04/2014, in A/V -- audio/visual, collaboration, communications, creativity, digital audio, digital learning, digital storytelling, digital video, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, higher education, immersion, innovation, interactivity, learning ecosystem, love of learning, media/film, Michigan, multimedia, online learning, participation, play, psychology, real-world assignments, relationships, religion, social learning / networks, social media, society, sociology, story, storytelling, student-related, surviving, teaching & learning, transmedia, universities, usability, user experience (UX), user interface design, using teams, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Last week I attended the 20th Annual Online Learning Consortium International Conference. While there, I was inspired by an excellent presentation entitled, “A Disruptive Innovation: MSU’s Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse – Are You Ready to Survive a New Way of Learning?“ The four team members from Michigan State University included:

Glenn R. Stutzky | Course Instructor
Keesa V. Muhammad | Instructional Designer
Christopher Irvin | Instructional Designer
Hailey Mooney | Course Librarian

Check out the intro clip on the website about the course:

From the description for the presentation:

This session highlights MSU’s award winning, groundbreaking online course that fuses social theory, filmmaking, social media, and viral marketing while students survive an apocalyptic event. http://zombie.msu.edu/

MSU created and used powerful digital storytelling and multimedia to overlay real, experiential, immersive learning. Important content was relayed, but in a way that drew upon your emotions, your ability to solve problems and navigate in a world where you didn’t have all of the information, your ability to work with others, and more.

“This innovative course integrates current research and science on catastrophes and human behavior together with the idea of a zombie apocalypse. In doing so, we actively engage with students as they think about the nature, scope, and impact of catastrophic events on individuals, families, societies, civilizations, and the Earth itself.”

“Our innovative approach to teaching and learning features: students as active participants, the instructor becomes the facilitator, storytelling replaces lectures, zombies become the catalyst of teaching, a “zombrarian” (librarian) drives research, and the students emerge as digital storytellers as a way of assessing their own learning.”

Others outside MUS have found out about the course and have requested access to it. As a result of this, they’ve opened it up to non-credit seeking participants and now various people from police forces, Centers for Disease Control, and others are able to take the course. To make this learning experience even more accessible, the cost has been greatly reduced: from $1600+ to just $500. (So this talented team is not only offering powerful pedagogies, but also significant monetary contributions to the university as well.)

For me, the key thing here is that this course represents what I believe is the direction that’s starting to really pull ahead of the pack and, if done well, will likely crush most of the other directions/approaches. And that is the use of teams to create, deliver, teach, and assess content – i.e., team-based learning approaches.

So many of the sessions involved professional development for professors and teachers – and much of this is appropriate. However, in the majority of cases, individual efforts aren’t enough anymore. Few people can bring to the table what a talented, experienced group of specialists are able to bring. Individual efforts aren’t able to compete with team-based content creation and delivery anymore — and this is especially true online, whereby multiple disciplines are immediately invoked once content hits the digital realm.

In this case, the team was composed of:

The professor
Two Instructional Designers
and a librarian

The team:

Developed websites
Designed their own logo
Marketed the course w/ a zombie walking around campus w/ brochures and a walking billboard
Used a Twitter stream
Used a tool called Pensu for their students’ individual journals
Made extensive use of YouTube and digital storytelling
Coined a new acronym called MOLIE – multimedia online learning immersive experience
Used game-like features, such as the development of a code that was found which revealed key information (which was optional, but was very helpful to those who figured it out). The team made it so that the course ended differently for each group, depending upon what the teams’ decisions were through the weeks
Used some 3D apps to make movies more realistic and to create new environments
Continually presented new clues for students to investigate. Each team had a Team Leader that posted their team’s decisions on YouTube.

They encouraged us to:
THINK BIG! Get as creative as you can, and only pull back if the “suits” make you! Step outside the box! Take risks! “If an idea has life, water it. Others will check it out and get involved.”

In their case, the idea originated with an innovative, risk-taking professor willing to experiment – and who started the presentation with the following soliloquy:

Syllabi are EVIL

Syllabi are EVIL and they must die!
Listen to me closely and I’ll tell you why.
Just want students to know what is known?
See what’s been seen?
Go – where we’ve been going?
Then the Syllabus is your friend,
cuz you know exactly where you’ll end.
But if you want to go somewhere new,
see colors beyond Red, Green, and Blue.
Then take out your Syllabus and tear-it-in-half,
now uncertainty has become your path.
Be not afraid because you’ll find,
the most amazing things from Creative Minds,
who have been set free to FLY,
once untethered from the Syllabi.

Glenn Stutzky
Premiered at the 2014
Online Learning Consortium International Conference
October 29, 2014

“The number of infected in Michigan has reached critical mass.” CSM Quintero #sw290 pic.twitter.com/F6m8ZaoRyG

— MSU Zombie (@MSUZombies) June 19, 2014

They started with something that wasn’t polished, but it’s been an iterative approach over the semesters…and they continue to build on it.

I congratulated the team there — and do so again here. Excellent, wonderful work!

By the way, what would a creative movie-like trailer look like for your course?

The amazing ways new tech shapes storytelling — from stuff.tv by Stephen Graves

Excerpt:

From the moment some singer-poet livened up his verse performances with a musical instrument, technology has changed entertainment. The printing press, theatrical lighting, the cinema, radio, cinematic sound – they’ve all either impacted on existing storytelling forms, or created whole new ones.

In recent years, the arrival of digital formats and non-linear editing changed TV. Existing TV formats like drama benefited from the same level of technical polish as films; and at the same time, the ability to shoot and edit large amounts of footage quickly and cheaply created a whole new form of storytelling – reality TV.

…

Streaming media’s one thing – but the biggest tech leap in years is, of course, your smartphone. Texting during films may infuriate but whipping your phone out in the cinema may become an integral part of the story: the 2013 film App used a second-screen app to display extra layers of narrative, synced to the film’s soundtrack. There are books that use second-screen apps: last year’s Night Film lets you scan tags in the physical book to unlock extra content, including mocked-up websites and trailers.

Also see:

Niantic Labs’ John Hanke: alternate reality games are the future of storytelling — from stuff.tv by Stephen Graves
The brains behind Google Earth and location-based game Ingress talks augmented reality, wearable tech and ARGs

It’s Not Film. It’s Not TV. It’s Convergence. Here’s What It’s All About. [Bernstein]

On 09/28/2014, in art, communications, convergence, creativity, digital storytelling, innovation, media/film, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, platforms, play, story, storytelling, transmedia, by Daniel Christian

It’s Not Film. It’s Not TV. It’s Convergence. Here’s What It’s All About. –– from indiewire.com by Paula Bernstein
A new wave of creators is blurring the lines of storytelling to span multiple platforms. Here, a handful of those creators from this year’s New York Film Festival Convergence program explain what convergence means to them.

Comment from DSC:
If this trend continues, I would guess that it would affect education as well. That is, students no longer want to be passive consumers, but active participants. Hmmm…sounds very familiar to me. Aren’t we already there (i.e., active learning, project-based learning, makerspaces, and more)?

Also see:

YFF Convergence: What’s to Be Gained With Immersive Storytelling? — from by Kel O’Neill | Indiewire September 25, 2014 at 12:31PM
In this guest post, Kel O’Neill, an alumnus of the New York Film Festival’s Convergence section, who co-created “Empire” with Eline Jongsma, explains the benefits of immersive storytelling.

Check Out ‘The Empire Project:’ An Interactive Documentary Making Its World Premiere at the NYFF Convergence –– from indiewire.com by Paula Bernstein
“Empire,” the new project from the transatlantic filmmaking team of Eline Jongsma and Kel O’Neill, is a perfect example of true interactivity and transmedia storytelling.

Learning Ecosystems

Augmented reality expert explains how AR will help humanity [Hardawar]

5 Lessons Learned While Making Lost [Unseld; regards making a VR movie]

Technology and The Evolution of Storytelling [Lasseter]

“The leap from film to VR is even bigger than the leap from radio to film was.”

Transmedia Literacy: Expanding the Media Literacy Frontier [Rutledge]

The amazing ways new tech shapes storytelling [Graves]

It’s Not Film. It’s Not TV. It’s Convergence. Here’s What It’s All About. [Bernstein]

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