Comments about Conducting Research on Digital Storytelling

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to add a few comments about the various websites, articles and other resources you have all been finding and discussing over the last few weeks. 

Point 1: I am truly astounded at how much material there is on the web about digital storytelling and how it's being used in so many different ways. When I first became interested in DS, there really wasn't that much material available and I think it's really remarkable to see how much and how fast this field is growing.

Point 2. I really love the descriptions that you are posting about the material you find. This will be really helpful when we're ready to add new content to the EUODS website, because it's much better to have an annotated link, than simply another web link, and because each of you brings a different set of experiences to your descriptions, which should make them relevant to many more visitors to the site.

Point 3: You've probably seen where I've mentioned that you should be thinking about ways to categorize the information that students are finding and we've had lots of good suggestions about that. But I think it's worth repeating again that when it comes time for you to choose a final semester project to develop for this course, many of you will probably choose topics that include a large amount of information, so please keep thinking about how you might organize the content you will be working with so that visitors to our site will be able to find what they're looking for.

Point 4: Most of you are doing a great job! Keep up the good work. A few students however seem to have gotten busy doing other things. If you're reading this and haven't been posting for a while, please relax, take a few deep breaths and think about posting even a few brief sentences to let the rest of us know that you're still with us. You may try posting a follow-up comment to what someone else has written or take a few minutes and post a quick reflection on your personal blog. I know that I get busy myself and don't get around to replyingt to everyone's postings as much as I would like, but you can be sure that I'm reading every post and I'll try to add more comments and I hope you will too.

Last Point (for now):  Remember that we will have our next optional face-to-face session from 9:00am to noon on Saturday, Feb. 21 in Room 328 of the CITE Lab at UH. We will conduct a hands-on session with Microsoft Photo Story 3 during the first half of the session, followed by questions & answers related to weekly assignments plus initial discussions of final semester projects--and of course, any other topics you would like to bring up. I hope to see you there.