God in a teen’s world

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 […]

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Nurturing student creativity

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

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Using wordle

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

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Animation tools

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.

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Digital storytelling wiki

I just discovered a lovely wiki site chock full of useful resources, including this page of links on digital storytelling. Wikis are really useful because they allow multiple people to create something together, creating a web of meaning that begins to grow an overarching framework of meaning, a little bit like leaves on the branches

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Learning stories, learning community

There are a couple of really wonderful programs in the Twin Cities of MN (St. Paul and Minneapolis), where young people learn leadership skills through learning media production. The Summer Media Institute of Migizi Communications is one such program: “We were originally founded to train American Indian journalists to tell their stories from their own

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Learning with and from poetry

In many ways digital stories — of the sort we are encouraging in this site, stories which support faith formation — are closely linked to poetry. Concise evocations of very specific experiences, these stories create resonance through their very particularity. Learning with and from poetry can help in our creation of digital stories. Here is

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Andrew Stanton on “story”

Andrew Stanton — one of the filmmakers who brought us Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Wall-E — visited TED recently to talk about story. I love this quote from his talk there: Wonder is honest, it’s completely innocent. It can’t be artificially evoked. For me, there’s no greater ability than the gift of another human being

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Truth in story

Alan Hurst, who writes his blog from a Mormon perspective, has a fascinating essay up about the ways in which story hold meaning in faith contexts. He’s noticed that there are some powerful science fiction writers in the Mormon community (my favorite, Orson Scott Card, among them) and muses on the roots such storying. Here’s

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When telling a story makes it come alive again…

We are convinced that the “create/share/believe” circle is never ending, and an essential way to describe how storytelling works. You can enter the circle at any point, and go in either direction — share/believe/create, for example, or share/create/believe, or any endless number of combinations — but no matter how much we believe that to be

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