• BTSA/OUSD Online Orientation Page All you need to know (and do) to attend the workshop fully prepared!

• Details on our 21st Century Skills Summit Details on our August 23 Summit as we bring together the community together to learn together.

• About Our Workshops Teaching participants to find, tell, create, and publish the stories of their lives.

• The 4-step Process Finding the experience. Telling the story. Creating the piece. Publishing the work.

• ***New Manual Coming Soon*** Check back soon for the updated "The How-Come, How-To Guide to Digital Storytelling'

• Calendar Dates, times, and locations of the workshops. Download the preparation document.

• Train-the-trainers For those with digital storytelling expereince wishing to train others.

The 4-step Process

There are four stages to our digital storytelling process.

1. Finding the Experience
We start with an appreciative inquiry approach to find meaningful experiences while we explore story styles and the power of personal narrative to facilitate a "re-storying" process that encourages deep reflection around the experience for a more evolved understanding of how our stories define who we are and how we walk through the world. We are a compilation of our experiences, and we need to know and communicate what those experiences are: we do that through story.


2. Telling the Story
Once we have "found" the story, we explore the best way to tell that story. Asking questions like who is our audience, what are we really trying to say, and what is the best way to say it. This includes writing the script in a way that works digitally and finding images that are both literal and symbolic. We download digital images and scan photographs and mementos. Then we are able to put the audio and visuals together using quick and easy storyboarding techniques. Discussion also focuses on understanding the intricacies of voice so as to use tone, diction, volume, and inflection as a incredibly powerful tool for creative expression.

3. Creating the Piece
At this stage it is all hands-on. Editing begins by combining the audio and visuals together using digital video editing software like iMovie4, Premiere, Pinnacle, or Final Cut Pro. Once in the software and after creating a rough cut, we add special effects, transitions, and titles to get to our final draft. As we move through the process, we also take note of problem areas around and with the technology, so that we learn easy solutions to common problems. As every artist knows, the process of creation is transformative. This is where we become producers of multi-media, not just consumers.

4. Publishing the Work
We'd like to call this the democratization of the media. We publish the stories that we have created to a variety of platforms: CD, DVD, VHS, web. Having created the stories, the natural next question is how do we use these stories, whether as learning tools and we develop curricula around them, for social activism, and program development, or as a tool for reflection, for healing.