Mary Hess

Bruce Feiler has an interesting piece in the NYTimes in which he describes the power of family narrative. His work mirrors much that has been written about in digital storytelling. I particularly appreciated this comment: if you want a happier family, create, refine and retell the story of your family’s positive moments and your ability […]

I’ve loved most every Pixar film ever made, which is really quite extraordinary, when you think about it. Here is a list of Pixar’s 22 rules of storytelling. Which one appeals to you?

The Center for Digital Storytelling, a community of people and resources that have been at the heart of the digital storytelling movement for more than 20 years, has just begun a blog — the Storycenter Blog – which promises to be a rich resource for all of us who are trying to do this work

Here’s a powerful example of what can happen with a community shares its stories more broadly, using digital tools and social media. …sharing our stories allows us to share our lives. Sharing our stories allows us to create new partnerships like the one that we now have with people of neighboring Christ Church, Oyster Bay

Although this blog post is not about digital storytelling, I think the points she is making apply equally well to digital stories. It might be that a congregation such as this could even consider recording the stories as they are told, and sharing them in wider contexts!

One of the more promising uses of digital storytelling in faith formation has been the pairing of young confirmands in Christian churches with a video camera, and a member of their community they don’t know well who is at least 40 years older than they are. The combination sparks a unique kind of interview process

We are hoping to gather examples from all over of ways in which people are using digital storytelling in faith formation. Here is an example that comes from Cheryl Smith, who is the Eastern Region Resource Administrator in the Roman Catholic diocese of Syracuse, New York. As catechists we are always looking for ways to

Here’s an interesting collection of examples and ideas aimed at developing student creativity using video projects in higher ed classrooms.  While these examples are not explicitly about faith formation they do hold a number of interesting ideas we can draw on. The Merlot site also has a useful collection of resources for building digital case

Here’s a great, brief way to invite people into an Advent prayer experience using wordle. Wordle is a lovely tool for shaping stories as well. I’ve had students take the text of a story they’ve written, and then put it into wordle to visualize it. The visualization often gives them new clues to what pictures

Here’s a nifty comparison of two animation apps for the iPad. While you’re at Steve Thomason’s blog, check out the whole thing as he’s a very thoughtful theologian trying to engage our contemporary settings.