Digital Stories

Watching the digital stories, I have noticed that the tone of the voice and the pace of the voice has a great deal on the movie. Along with the perfect amount of time that is taken on each time and also the transitions (make sure they are appropriate for the picture that is being presented. The background music seems very hard to pick. Finding the right song that flows with the tone of the story seems difficult. The creator of each movie has to make sure everything is portraying how the feeling was to the author. The emotion of these movies are so strong, in just 3 minutes you can be in tears about some story about a person you have never met. A lot of these stories seem so strong and passionate, mostly seems that people right more about death and about ill people, I’m not going to lie but that is kind of sad.

Everyone Has a Story.

I’m sure I have seen many digital stories before, but I had never really thought about them. Looking through the Stories For Change website, I found out a lot about digital story telling. Some stories use no music, but many pictures. Some use very powerful music that ties in to their narration. Some are like personal letters to people, while others are more lighthearted and fun. The one thing that all of these stories have in common is that they share a personal experience in a powerful way. Whether it is about the person’s favorite place, or how they made a difference in their community. The thing I like about digital story telling is that everyone’s lives are different, and we all have many different impactful stories that we could share with others. Digital story telling is a great way to do this, since it uses the story teller’s own voice, with significant images and music.

Digital Stories

After looking through several types of digital stories, I find it interesting that basically any type of story can be told through a digital story. Some are about love, adventure, tragedy, morals, and comedy. The use of pictures in some of the ones I watched made a big difference on the entire feel of the story while on others it was the music. I liked how some people really put a lot of emotion and personal feelings into theirs while other people had more fun with it and made it exciting. There are lots of ways to add interest in a digital story and here is a website that I found with several good tips for digital storytelling.

Digital Story - High School Life

Here is a video a friend of mine made for his high school senior portfolio project. It shows how his experiences at DeSmet Jesuit High School, the school I went to as well, had a huge positive effect on his life. I can definately relate to his video because we were a part of the track and football team as we did a lot of stuff together throughout high school. The video not only shows how the school changed us, but brought back some great memories of all the friends and fun that we had at the four years we were at the school.

Digita Story

Well I see that our blog for today is about digital storytelling. This reminded me of this flash animation that someone made about their 18th birthday. The person told his story with a song about him turning eighteen and having to be drafted into the army. I thought it was a little sad, since the person seems scared to be in the army. I also found it a little strange seeing this kind of flash animation, since this person usually makes funny animations. You can view the animation here. If you like his animation, then you should probably check some of the other work that he his made.

Facebook leads to kindey transplant

Bauerlein often criticizes social networking sites and simply groups them all as bad. He never really mentions anything positive about them, making his arguement very biased. However, KMOV recently did a segment on the news about my "uncle" who received a kidney transplant and how facebook saved his life in a way. His daughter was always on Facebook and often wrote about how her father badly needed a transplant. None of his family was a match snd a lady from their church, who also used Facebook, saw this and decided to see if she was a match. She was and the surgery was performed a few weeks later. He is now doing MUCH better and without Facebook, who knows how long it could have taken to find a match. Things like this go to show that social networking sites can be about more than just fun and entertainment. Because they reach out to a very broad group, you can reach hundreds of people from one simple post or status update.
Here is the link to the video: KMOV Video

Your Digital Story

After looking through a couple of digital stories on YouTube, I started to notice some very similar things about them. On most of them, they would use Flash in order to help them tell their story. I watched a simple one on baseball. He used Flash to demonstrate how he swung and missed the ball rather than just using a picture. From what I've seen digital stories just are much more interesting and make the job of telling a story much easier. The pictures and the use of Flash make it very easy to keep people entertained. I think that details are more easily remebered by these stories too. I know personally that I learn much easier when I have pictures to back my information up.



Although I found quite a few digital stories about serious/tragic issues in one's life, I also came across some stories that were just for plain entertainment. All in all, digital stories seem like an interesting way to share a story that the teller may find emotionally disturbing. It is also just a different way to get out "your" story to the rest of the world.



Here is a digital story about baseball:

Our political system

I was reading micahs blog post (which was excellent) and I had to comment because i was thinking about the same topic. In today's society voters don't really take the time to go out and find out the candidates stances on many issues. For example, my uncle votes democrat no matter what the candidates views are, because he is in the union. The union pretty much tells them that if they don't vote democrat than they are possibly putting themselves and many of their co-workers out of work. Yet they can vote how they want, The choice doesn't seem to be theirs anymore. This is one problem i have noticed with our generation, many people just vote how their parents or relatives voted without even studying the issues. So please take the time to find out for your self and form your own opinion before voting in 2012.

Tyler J. Immethun

Bauerlein, Its Not Your Culture Anymore!

I despise this man! He first decides that he is going to pick on the "Digital Generation" for their lack of intellegence, then he decides that the mentors are part of the cause of this problem.


Bauerlein keeps metioning culture. On page 202, he says, "...but it wont sustain the best civic and cultural traditions in American history." What Bauerlein seems to forget, is that culture changes. This isn't back in the 20th century where there was no internet, no video games, no social networks. This is the 21st century where these things are popular. Stop trying to compare us to the past. We are not in any way like the previous generations. There is more than just reading and intellegence. More than just books and studying. What happened to community. Oh, thats right, Facebook sort of does that for us. I believe that our generation has brought out something that lasts longer than intellegence: community.


After searching, I found this video talking about Parents on Facebook. Notice how the older generation is actually using Facebook. Not just a miniscule amount neither, about 45% of Facebook users are over 25. Our influence seems to be spreading to the older generation. We must be doing something right. Sure they are accepting our norms, but thats our new culture. Mentors have not allowed mediocrity in any way. Instead, they are actually connecting with their kids. Not building a wall between the two generations. So stop comparing this culture with yours, Bauerlein. We are nothing like you, and im sick of the complaining.