• UK adults’ media literacy | Ofcom – Interesting comparisons in this report to previous surveys carried out by OFCOM

• Place-Based Digital Storytelling Modules – National Parks of America – As the latest Ken Burns series about National Parks hits the screens on PBS television in the USA a series of web tutorials about place based digital storytelling has been created by the the National Parks of America.
  As an elementary introduction to Digital Storytelling this series of screen casts is excellent. Well worth a visit. My one comment would be that the example uses way too may zooms on the still images and some images are repeated too often – you only need to see a picture once. All the same, the site is a useful resource for anyone wanting to develop digital storytelling skills.

• Online video more popular than blogging and social networking – Brand Republic News – Brand Republic – This is a very interesting and revealing piece of reporting. It demonstrates the opportunities presented to digital storytellers. There is an audience out there willing to watch video online in preference to watching broadcast TV. The challenge is now about promoting those stories to the potential audience.

• Vicar’s shed for ex-cons – Yorkshire Evening Post – This is one of the stories I recently recorded at a workshop for the Yorkshire and Humber Faiths Forum.
• What does social capital have to do with digital inclusion? : Connected Communities – A chance to participate in this event online. Storytelling is the heart of digital inclusion. The means to tell your story are secondary to knowing what you want your story to say.
• Video tools list for journalists – Jumpcut is closing down. Yahoo bought it about 18 months ago and now they’re pulling the plug as “part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo!”. So I went on a search for other sites that offered slideshow and video editing services. None appear to be as versatile as Jumpcut, but there’s a list here if you want to plough through and give them a try. If you find one that suits the digital storytelling process come back here and comment. After a quick browse through the list Movie Masher appears to be best suited.
• 7 Minutes to Reinvent the Internet – The web has turned advertising principles on their head. The money is flowing in new directions and who knows where it will all end up. Seven people look into the not too distant future to suggest how advertising can be reinvented to fit the internet. Whilst these presentations are largely about making money, the lessons about how people use and experience the internet are valuable to all content creators.

So sometime this spring I shall be in Dorset Training Trainers to deliver workshops of their own.

And on Monday I am at the National Media Museum in Bradford to start a workshop for Broadcast Engineers. The weather’s not looking too kind at the moment (Sunday evening) but hopefully the train will take me there – and those participating.

You can watch stories told by acoustics engineers in a pilot workshop to give you an idea of the style of these digital stories.

For more details and a booking form contact Dr Zoe Stec. L.Z.Stec@salford.ac.uk

This is the blog of Gareth Morlais. Gareth was the guy who showed me my first Digital Story back in 2001. It was made in one of the pilot workshops of the BBC Capture Wales project, which has sadly just closed it’s programme.

In this blog you will find an introduction to the BBC Wales Guide to Digital Storytelling. It contains the distilled wisdom of several years experience of running workshops across Wales.