Singapore International Storytelling Festival 2010

Asian Digital Storytelling Congress
Beyond Words

4 September 2010, 9.00am to 6.00pm
@ The Salon, National Museum

Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. Nearly 80 countries worldwide have been introduced to it and the massive growth in the last few years has demonstrated the strength of this distinct new genre of communication.

By examining new creative works, the Congress is an international meeting of professionals and digital media enthusiasts, will discuss, share and communicate new concepts in the art of digital storytelling. The discussion will lay its focus on the use of digital storytelling in education, language comprehension, community building, personal development and entertainment.

Programme

9.00 am – 9.30 am Registration
9.30 am – 10.00 am Keynote:
Digital Storytelling – A Global Movement… Its Future and Possibilities

Barrie Stephenson
In the complex world of technology, social networking and mass media, effective communication is still best served by a simple story. Its power, to bring others into our experience and to transport us into theirs, drives us on to discover new ways of telling them. So as digital storytelling leaves infancy and those of us who nurtured it look to the future, what's its potential and where will it take us?  After a decade of practical workshops, Barrie Stephenson looks ahead to see how we might develop our craft and whose stories we may be shaping. As newer technology and emerging networks come within our grasp what will they tell and how will they tell it?
10.00am – 10.30am Plenary 1:
Storytelling Tools for the Digital Age - Computer Games, Interactive Fiction, Machinima

Tom Banaszewski
While technology continues to change rapidly, story remains a central common approach to effectively engaging an audience. If you've outgrown Powerpoint for your digital storytelling needs, Tom Banaszewski will share on how people are telling stories by creating their own computer games, creating interactive choose-your-own-adventure type stories and blending video game footage to make "machinima" stories.
10.30am – 11.00am Plenary 1:
Storytelling Tools for the Digital Age in the Diploma of Film, Sound and Video programme, Ngee Ann Polytechnic

Melanie Morrissette
Teaching storytelling can be achieved in many ways especially in the digital age. As with traditional storytelling, most digital stories focus on a specific topic and are told from a particular point of view. This session will be about the digital storytelling tools utilized in the Diploma of Film, Sound and Video programme at the School of Film & Media Studies, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, and how these digital tools can be possibly adapted and applied in your classrooms.
11.00am – 11.30am Morning Tea break
11.30am – 1.00pm

Concurrent Sessions 1 - 2

Session 1:
Digital Storytelling in the Classroom

Tom Banaszewski
For ten years, Tom has been helping students create personal narrative digital stories. The technology used for putting the stories together has expanded to include over 50 different tools. What's still missing is the technology that helps students craft the story. Recently, he has started using blogs and wikis to support the script writing stage of the digital storytelling process. This session will walk you through the steps Tom uses for managing a middle school short story project and demonstrate how the technology supports the storytelling process.

Session 2:
Guidelines to creating an imaginative script quickly

Barrie Stephenson
What makes good writing? Learn techniques to writing a useable script within a limited timescale; tips and tricks that Barrie has proved through the numerous digital story storytelling workshops he has conducted in the U.K.

1.00pm – 2.30pm Lunch
2.30pm – 3.00pm Plenary 2:
Transmedia Storytelling: how do we tell effective stories in the digital age?

Tom Banaszewski
Ask any two educators to define literacy for the 21st century and you will have a difficult time finding two matching responses. The discussion will feature the terms "new media literacies" and "multi-literacies" and probably a few others, but what exactly does new media literacy look like for educators and all those interested in how stories are being developed with new media tools. This session will feature current research in New Media studies and share examples of transmedia storytelling, such as as the successful Inanimate Alice series.
3.00pm – 4.00pm Plenary 3:
Collecting and Distribution Digital Stories - using online effectively

Barrie Stephenson and Helen Simondson
Digital Storytelling is one of the user generated media forms that is being widely adopted in a range of contexts and by a variety of organisations and individual practitioners with the aim to promote participatory culture more broadly. This plenary will explore some of the approaches organisations and individuals are taking to distribute and collect these stories and will raise some of the issues currently facing practitioners at a time where pockets of activity are happening with little sense of coherence or connectivity and similarly there is very little available research to date other than case-study or domain-specific research.
4.00pm – 4.30pm Afternoon Tea break
4.30pm – 6.00pm

Concurrent Sessions 3 - 4

Session 3:
Fun and Simple Storytelling Techniques

Sharon Phuah
This session is designed to assist you in garnering some easy yet effective storytelling techniques, highlighting the importance of keeping records of your observations, memories and experience. These written records can be either handwritten journals or in digital blogs which are accessible, fun and simple to create. You will learn how to create meaning through stories inspired by your own lives and imagination.

Session 4:
Generator: A case study in delivering dynamic and contextual content into schools

Helen Simondson
The launch of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image’s Generator made available an unprecedented access to its digital storytelling and community documentary collections to school students and teachers. Generator employs strategies that empower students and teachers to engage, explore, explain elaborate and evaluate the linear content distributed online through a range of interactive activities that support the collection content. This session looks at Generator as an interesting case study in how linear works can be enhanced through web 2.0 tools to more actively engage and in particular meet the expectations of an education audience that seeks to engage with content in a multi-modal approach.

 

Who Should Attend?

Multimedia producers, storytelling enthusiasts, teachers, trainers, archivists, educators, librarians, and community development officers who participate in the Congress will take back with them collective wisdom and expertise that they will gather from some of the best talents of the world in Digital Storytelling.

Other Individuals and communities, with little or no background in Digital Media, will likewise benefit from their participation in the Congress.

Download flyer Register Online!

Boot Camp on Digital Storytelling by Barrie Stephenson

6-8 September 2010, 10.00am to 6.00pm
@ Nobel Room, Toa Payoh Public Library

A practical workshop for tutors to learn how to engage and train others in digital storytelling through telling a short media-rich digital story of your own. This workshop will take you through the process, from recruiting participants and discovering their story, to the skills, techniques and technology of capturing it for a potential audience. Come prepared with a story idea and images to surround it and develop your skills so that you can pass them on to others. This workshop presumes that you have some prior knowledge of digital storytelling. Not suitable for absolute beginners.

® Educators, community workers, librarians, and anyone interested in learning innovative ways to presenting their stories digitally with new technology.

Register Online!

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