Digital Storytelling- What will your Great-Grandchildren Know About You?
Cross posted on Tech & Learning Blog
I just returned from a road trip with my husband and daughters. It was a trip into the past, as we visited my husband’s eighty year old aunt (the baby sister of his father who passed away when my husband was only seventeen) and other relatives.
This trip was about learning as much as possible of that father, but also about his grandparents and the area in Connecticut that they lived in. There are few photographs left of them. We relied on these images as well as the oral stories the surviving aunts that knew him could tell us. We visited the places they lived in and worked at trying to piece together a puzzle to construct a life long gone.
In one hundred years, our present will be ” a life long gone”. What will we leave behind for our descendants, so they can piece together the puzzle of Who we were?
- What would you like your great-grandchildren to know about YOU?
- What was your life like?
- How did you look?
- Where did you live? How did the town/city look?
- What was important to you?
- Who did you call family?
- How did you spend your days? Work? Hobbies? Free Time?
Documenting these kinds of things for the generations to come was difficult in the past. Owning a still (or later on a video)Â camera was not wide spread. It was time consuming and often expensive. Writing a journal or conserving letters was probably the most used media in documenting daily lives and events.
Fast forward now to 2009. Almost everyone owns a digital camera in one shape or form (point & shoot/cell phone/webcam). There is no additional cost in taking as many images or video footage as we like, no more developing or purchasing film. It makes no difference if you choose to take 10 or 1000 images on any given occasion.
Not only do we have the equipment to freeze a moment in time, but it seems that we also have gone through a shift in our attitudes towards wanting to document our moment in space and time. Did generations before us feel the need as much as our generation does to document everything we do, say and think to paint a picture of who we are were.
With different digital media, such as images, video, text and audio, we can create our stories that will pass on to generations that will follow us.
I have written about using the following tools in creating digital stories before:
Here are a few more ideas and sites that can help create a snapshot to tell your descendants the story of your life.
Look at the 365 Photo Challenge on Flickr.
A photo per day project for 2009 – 365 photos by the end of the year. No rules, except that you shoot one photo per day. Doesn’t matter of what, or with what.
Can you imagine the story 365 photos can tell of a year in your life? Ups, downs, routines, surprises, life cycle events, travels, work, free time, laughter, sadness, etc…
Check also “Daily Mugshots” out, a site I stumbled across by a recommendation from Talking SmartBoards & Much More.
You take a picture of yourself every day and then turn it into a video. Daily Mugshots makes it easier to do just that.
- It will send e-mail reminders to take the image
- It allows you to e-mail images via your cell phone, upload from your computer or directly from your webcam
- Create and have an old fashioned flip book printed from your shots
- Publish widgets to your blog, facebook and other social network sites
If taken with your webcam, this can take less than 5 seconds every day and you could document the growth of your children or students, your own aging 
, a pregnancy, hairstyles, outfits, seasons, etc.
Email This Post
Print This Post
Hi Silvia, Your post reminds me that it doesn’t have to be a major project to create a document that records events, thoughts, or to document parts of our lives. I love the idea of Daily Mugshots, the 365 challenge didn’t work so well for me. I’ll give it a try. Thanks again for sharing your ideas, knowledge and resources!
[...] 8/8/09- Silvia Tolisano from the amazing Langwitches Blog wrote a wonderful post, “Digital Sotrytelling- What Will Your Great Grandchildren Know Abbout You” about her vision of using Daily Mugshots to chronicle your life. In Silvia’s words, [...]
Shaping Youth has become a bit of a digital history in itself for me in terms of pop culture touch-points and archives…
One of our latest ideas to challenge our youth advisors without overwhelming them is to ask each teen to pick a topic and step it out through the lens of multiple generations: the 21st century child, parent, grandparent or similar vintage participants…Could be a hoot.
For example, my mom turns 80 soon, and my daughter and I will both be contributing our take in a ‘that was then this is now’ snapshot about what it feels like to ‘enter high school’ (the feelings/norms/angst/environs/attire/activities, etc.)
Not sure if we’ll go the YouTube editing on cam route too, but know eventually we’ll compile a ‘living book’ asking our readers to engage in the same manner, UGC style, and publish a tangible edition to benefit our nonprofit, which deals with media & marketing’s impact on kids.
Lots of school iterations I can think of with this using Tumblr or other digital tidbits…Fun! Thanks for this!
Heart warming post! Several digital storytelling tools are now available to teachers. However, I like the idea of documenting various stages in our life, what we wore, our hairstyles, aging and so forth. I think for ELLs this could be a way for them to keep a connection with their native country and share their stories with other native students. Parents could also do this to keep a digital family history which is powerful for children.
[...] Tolisano’s Langwitches writes about a Digital Story Telling project What Will Your Great Grandchildren Know About You? with family members or other’s that can be put to video form. This would make a good writing [...]
[...] about the importance of leaving something of yourself behind for descendants. In an entry titled Digital Storytelling-What will your Great-Grandchildren Know About You?, she writes: In one hundred years, our present will be “a life long gone.” What will we [...]
[...] “Digital Storytelling: What will your Great-Grandchildren Know about You” Writer: Silvia Tolisano Date Posted: August 8, 2009 Subject: The importance of storytelling Role in [...]