Digital Storytelling

Part of the work that I have been getting into over the past few years is in the realm of digital stories. Digital storytelling allows us a way to preserve our heritage through the medium of computers and digital recorders.

If you go to http://storycorps.net/listen/, you can hear audio stories done in the form of interviews of families.

More creative artists combine the audio stories with pictures and movies of the real person. I’ve tried this with my own family. You can listen to my sister’s interview about my mother at: http://hdhstory.net/digitalstories_files/Digital Story – Mom.mov. You’ll need to have Quicktime on your computer for it to run. It may take a little while to load.

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Original Story – Part 5 – It’s a matter of trust.

I was at school when my niece called me to inform me about my sister. I got very emotional on the phone. My niece couldn’t understand why I got so upset; after all it was her mother that got hurt. My sister did okay and recovered, but wasn’t about to visit my mother and let her know. It happened late during the week, so I could go in that weekend and be the one to visit my mother. I let her know that my sister wasn’t feeling well, but didn’t disclose the real reason she couldn’t visit.
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Original Story – Part 4 – A break in the action

Nineteen eighty-five was the year of the breaks, both good breaks and bad. It was the year I purchased my first house. It was the year Hurricane Gloria hit Long Island. It was the year I met the woman who was to become my wife. It was the year, in a family that had never broken a bone, had their bodies start to fall apart.

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Original Story – Part 3 – What’s the story?

Softball games were played on Sunday, therefore school was the next day. This being June, the part of the year that we try to cover 6 months of curriculum we haven’t covered in the 3 weeks we have left, I decided that I couldn’t miss it. I arranged for a substitute teacher to be hired to work with me. I came in and taught until I was too wiped out to teach (about 45 minutes), went to the principal’s office, where there was a futon that I could use and slept. When I woke up, I went back and taught again. After two days I was well enough to solo for the entire day.
Everyone wanted to know what happened
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Original Story – Part 2 – The Break

At this point I wasn’t sure if I broke anything, I did know that I was in a lot of pain. This was during the era when not everyone owned a cell phone. Luckily one of our player’s, house was right next to the playing field. He went home to call for an ambulance, while the rest of the team tried to give me first aid. They had realized that something was amiss. It wasn’t long before the fire department’s rescue vehicle turned up, my arm was immobilized and I was put into the ambulance. Dennis, the player who made the call, decided that he would ride with me in the ambulance. Mack decided that he would drive Dennis’s car and follow the ambulance to the hospital so that Dennis and I would have a ride home. This wasn’t totally altruistic on Mack’s part. He was pleased that this also got him out of having to go home early (since the game was cancelled) and have to mow his lawn which is what his wife had requested of him that morning. Continue reading →

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Original Story – Part 1 – You’re an Animal

This is an event in my life that I want to create into a telling story. I’ll begin it today and as the days go on I will continue to elaborate on the event. When I am done, I will look back at it and revise it to mold it into a tellable story. Should I keep it my personal story? or fictionalize it with other characters? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I played softball for in the local community recreation league for over 10 years. It was a very friendly league. No umpires, batters got 3 swings, coaches on first and third made the calls, etc. The team I played on was made up of a bunch of middle-aged teachers and friends. It was a fun league that had teams from high school/college kids ranging in age from late teens to early 20s, to the Boys of Summer team that was made up of men in their 50’s and 60’s for the most part. Age-wise we fell somewhere to the right of middle nearer the oldest group.
We struggled for years to come up with a name for our team. Continue reading →

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Types of Stories to learn

Somewhere in the future I see myself having a number of different types of programs to offer schools, libraries, festivals, and re-enactments. To do that I need to have a broader base of stories that I can tell. If I’m going to tell in schools, historical events become a focus of the types of stories that would best suit me. Being able to come into schools and present American Revolution, Civil War, Industrial Revolution, Native American tales, etc. would make me very marketable. Where do you find these types of stories, that I can learn and enjoy telling similar to the tales that I already tell now? Continue reading →

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What type of Stories do you like?

One of the things that I have to think about in designing my repertoire is what are the types of stories I want to learn and perform. Down the road I would like to have a number of themed programs that fits the needs of schools and libraries at any given time. This being my first attempt at making a career out of storytelling, I first need to get myself known. Rather than work at learning these thematic stories to create different programs, I need to create a program that shows off what I can do. As I get more positive exposure , I will be able to create the programs that are more versatile and encourage places to have multiple reasons to hire me. So what type of stories do I like to learn and perform from the repertoire I have now? Continue reading →

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Writing Stories

“With a questioning look on his face, Marty announced…” “John spoke gruffly” Sentences like that might work in a story written for readers. But as a teller of tales, one doesn’t need some of the expressions that can be shown on the teller’s face as he/she tells. Depending on the teller’s technique, using things such as physical stance (to show old, out of shape), voice skill (to show being scared, young, happy) can be done through the telling. Is story writing for a tale to be told different from story writing for one that is read? Continue reading →

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Where are those ideas?

I like to write. Most of the writing that I’ve done has been non-fictional. They comprise the 33+ years of teaching I did in the form of journals. Continue reading →

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