Discovering the art of storytelling by showcasing methods, tips, & tools that help you find and tell your story, your way. Find me on Twitter @gimligoosetales
DigitalStory.Tools is a directory of tools and resources to help you build your digital stories. Have fun with our handpicked list of 85 tools.
Read the full article to find the link to the (currently) 21 categories of tools.
Kim Zinke (aka Gimli Goose)'s insight:
The hackastory site provides free tips, inspiration and tools on innovation in journalism. While the site is aimed at journalists, many of the tools they've compiled are applicable to most anyone pursuing their digital story.
HackastoryTools, como su nombre lo indica ofrece, según indica 85 herramientas para realizar diferentes acciones, por lo que la considero útil para los múltiples propósitos.
"This is a list of story models, techniques, tools, & resources from our storytelling workshop. There are different models that can help you to piece your story together."
Read the full article to find out more about these models:
Lead with Story CAR Model
Made to Stick SUCCES Model
Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey Model
Ira Glass on Storytelling
Pixar’s 22 Rules to Phenomenal Storytelling
Story Workshop Development Activities
Kim Zinke (aka Gimli Goose)'s insight:
A nice collection of models and techniques to tell short and long stories.
This workshop will cover a simple development process. Participants will create a digital story using images, audio, and/or video using free web tools and/or mobile apps. I use "story" in a general sense; it may be one of personal discovery or growth, a fictional narrative, a travel experience, a presentation, or something else you find worth telling. I discovered more than 50 such tools and recently have expanded the site to include mobile apps as creative platforms. As an example I created the same story in each tool. The result is that a good story and the creative process should and do transcend the tools.
The workshop process:
Warm Up Activity
The Way of the 50+ Ways (presentation above)
Table Group Activity: Story Brainstorm
Table Group Activity: Pick and Find the So What?
Table Group Activity: Find Media
Individual Activity: Build a Story in a Web Tool and/or a Mobile App
Summary and Review
To see the workshop in action see Alan's blog post.
Kim Zinke (aka Gimli Goose)'s insight:
Over the years I have referred many times to Alan's original site and am a huge fan. He took a single story idea, retold it using free web tools, and posted the results. I'm so glad to see he's updating it on a new site and adding mobile apps. And also invites others to contribute.
I like the format he used at Skidmore (described above). It looked like it was a lot of fun and pretty easy format to replicate at your own digital storytelling workshop.
Disney has created a branded tool called Story that allows any of us (well, anyone with an iPhone) to effortlessly tell and share annotated narratives. Think of it like creating a mini scrapbook with a pulse.
What it does: Story allows you to organize new or existing photos and videos from your iPhone into sharable digital flip books. You can also add captions, text, and play with various themes and layouts. (But no filters. Guessing that’ll come later.) The album is private until you share it (via Facebook or email for now — I’m guessing more sharing platforms will come later as well). Your Story is also saved in iCloud — allowing you to sync it to other Apple devices.
New tools like Storify make it easy to pull elements from social networks together to illustrate a theme or tell a story, whether you are a professional journalist or a local activist, a leader or a person with a story to share. The most successful creators Storify pages are united by one thing: they’re skilled editors and curators who know how to look at content posted on multiple social networks and pull out the pieces that will best help them to tell a story.
This article showcases a number of great examples of Storify being used to tell stories. Also included are some basic steps to follow if you want to use Storify to tell your story:
1. Make sure you have accounts for your site or organization on all the major social networks.
2. Use hashtags and keywords to find story content.
Hats to Susan Mernit, who has an excellent piece on Knight Digital Media Center about how to do effective news curation and storytelling with Storify.
She brings in lots of relevant stories and examples showcasing how other individuals and journalists have been effectively using this news curation platform.
"The most successful creators of Meograph and Storify pages are united by one thing: they’re skilled editors and curators who know how to look at content posted on multiple social networks and pull out the pieces that will best help them to tell a story."
“Storify is the best way to gather tweets, comments, snippets and images from all around the Web and put them into one post. It's a new way of blogging that lets all your Internet friends participate.”
Brava Susan, great job and superglad to have intercepted you again.
Create playable stories, instant videos on the fly! Collect cool videos, images, text and audio first. Make perfect cuts on the timeline with drag'n'drop controls. Publish your new short movie instantly without conversion or rendering time.
Kim Zinke (aka Gimli Goose)'s insight:
Free. This looks like a fun tool to try out. I like the ability to layer different types of media. Seems pretty straight forward.
Introducing Expedia's Find Your Story Facebook app. Simply upload the photos from your trip and share your journey with friends. Get started at www.findyours.com (takes you to Facebook).
Now, Expedia has handed the "Find Yours" storytelling over to its customers with an interactive Facebook app that allows users to make their own transformational videos. The app accesses users’ pictures from Facebook or Instagram and uses Google Maps to create a slide show video of their travel photos. People are prompted to answer questions such as “what are you looking for” and choose locations, photos, filters, and music in order to create their own shareable short film.
Stories and storytelling can make a significant impact on the development of a child. Stories can strengthen not only their language, but their ability to tell their own story and to make themselves heard.
Access the article to download the free 104 page online guide which covers:
- The importance of storytelling and stories - The relationship between attachment and storytelling - The Three T model of storytelling - Creating story worlds
- Supporting resources - A story selection - Story-making game cards (see seperate download)
An easy way to create infographics and posters with ready-made visual themes - vhemes.
Wow -- I see several templates I'm going to use today for my work with clients. What fun! This platform looks easy to use and I hope it is. Talk about some great visual storytelling!
In the meantime, I hope you find some templates you can use. Enjoy playing!
Thanks to fellow curator Baiba Svenca for finding this and sharing!
"Our ancestors used it to preserve history; sometimes even drawing images on cave walls and rocks to support their narratives. Kids before grew up telling stories around the campfire, their eyes reflecting the joy and wonder at new chronicles heard over roasted marshmallows.
Today, storytelling takes on the form of interactive media. Thanks to advancements in technology, we’re not just exploring stories from history or science – we’re also discovering each other’s tales. From students, journalists, cooks, photographers, and even entrepreneurs: we’ve become the new breed of digital storytellers."
Read the full article to find out more about these six platforms for digital storytellers:
Une sélection de 6 plateformes digitales, variées et faciles à utiliser pour organiser votre contenu du simple témoignage à un storytelling plus complexe
"According to experts, 99% of all stories ever told can be categorized into seven basic plots: Underdog, Quest, Journey/Return, Rags to Riches, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth.
Understanding which plot your business/brand story falls into can help you focus your marketing messages and storytelling efforts into a more cohesive whole."
Take the quiz in this article to find out which of the seven major story plots best fits your needs.
Kim Zinke (aka Gimli Goose)'s insight:
This is a quick and fun way to help you find an appropriate story. After picking the best fit from the 15 questions, your primary story type is returned. The synopsis then goes on to provide:
Famous stories and characters that fit this framework
Famous examples in business
Archetypes
Keywords
Storytelling elements
The pattern of such a story is likely to unfold like this
"Use this tool to help come up with creative writing topics. Click the buttons for setting, character and conflict suggestions. If you don’t like the suggestions, click again. Maybe you’ll use the idea or maybe it will stir up an original idea."
Kim Zinke (aka Gimli Goose)'s insight:
What a fun tool! This would make a great team building activity. Similar to 5 Card Flickr concept. Here's an example of what my first selection drew:
"Storytelling with multiple media, often a combination of written text, photography and videos (but has can encompass all kinds of media – from illustrated graphic novels, to interactive visualized data) make for a much more captivating and engaging narrative. As more and more people head out to craft their own multimedia stories, so we’ve seen more app and web developers rise to the challenge of making this easier and quicker to achieve.
Some of the new storytelling tools have taken the form of desktop and HTML 5 web-based tools, while others the form of specially-developed applications for iOS and Android devices. Some of them are aimed at casual storytellers, others for those who have devoted their lives to it. One thing most of them have in common, is a thorough embrace of the multimedia or interactive approach."
Read the full article to find out more, see examples and access links to these 5 online storytelling tools:
Cowbird has released a new feature that allows you to embed a single story into a blog post or news story.
Cowbird is a storytelling tool which allows users to create multimedia stories with audio, images, text and other features. It has been used by organization's like National Geographic who used it to tell a reservation’s whole story.
Kim Zinke (aka Gimli Goose)'s insight:
I haven't tried out this tool yet, but I think it's a great thing whenever it is possible to create your item on another site but are able to embed it on your own platform. It means you don't have to send people away from your site and keeps your stories together under your own umbrella.
The article also includes links to the National Geographic story as well as a collection of Cowbird stories.
This online workshop is for storytellers of every sort: ones who might have a bit of trouble getting started, ones who are a little stuck in the middle, and those who are simply in search of a new idea.
Story Elves work in four distinct ways: writing a story, editing the words, illustrating the story and designing the look of each page. By undertaking these four types of work, a story becomes a polished book.
We offer tips of these four kinds, in the event that you might like to create books of your own. Don’t forget that you can collaborate with another artist, as we ourselves do.
You may desire to work on one thing at a time: writing, editing or illustrating or design. Therefore, we stack our tips in separate rooms, to make each aspect of story work more clear.
|It’s easy to share photos (Flickr, Instagram, Facebook). It’s easy to visit places (Google Street View). It’s easy to tell stories (every blogging platform on earth). So what if you want to give someone a tour of your home town?
Dio is a new site by Linden Lab, who you know best for Second Life. It’s essentially a photo-sharing site with a twist: Rather than simply navigating by thumbnails or next buttons, Dio allows you to link images through a larger, branching narrative. The result? You don’t just have a set of photos; you have an interactive place or story."
Free. Dio is currently in beta. I wanted to see what one of the stories looked like but the only way to view was to login with Facebook or request an invite. I think that will hurt them - if you want people to know what you offer, you need to let them see without commiting to the service.
I didn't find it really intuitive to keep the story moving along at first, but once I started to figure it, it kept my attention even if it's a bit clunky. I like that you can pick the way you want to explore the story.
From Karen: Ooohhh ooooohh oooooohh -- this looks like a fabulous and fun tool for biz storytelling!! Now you can make your stories interactive. How fun is that?!!
I'll play with this tool this afternoon while avoiding all the shopping frenzy of Black Friday. Hope you have fun with it too and that it really helps connect with customers and build your business!
Thanks go to fellow curator Baiba Svenca for finding and sharing this post.
inklewriter is a free tool designed to allow anyone to write and publish interactive stories. It’s perfect for writers who want to try out interactivity, but also for teachers and students looking to mix computer skills and creative writing.
A nice feature of this resource is that you can export your story to Kindle for a small fee (approx $10). You be able to read your ebook on your Kindle, or sell it through Amazon. The ebook reads like a normal Kindle ebook, except that choices are included using hyperlinks.
Welcome to the Search Stories Video Creator. Just type in your searches and select the kind of results that best communicate your story. Then, share your story with the world.
Ha ha ha -- I just spent several hours creating 7 very short videos about business storytelling -- and had a ton of fun using Google's Search Stories Video Creator!!
These are micro-stories, each with a beginning, middle, and an end. All but 3 contain a context, premise, problem, and solution. And I'll re-do those 3 tomorrow so they are stories rather than promos.
See, you CAN share a mini-business story using some of these new technologies!
This tool is so easy to use it takes no time at all. And I now have a YouTube channel :))
What a total hoot. I couldn't stop giggling every time I made one. Go check them out and tell me what you think. Then go make some of your own!
What I love to do is take a story text and create a word cloud. It's fun and a different way to create a story graphic when you need to. Now comes along a great free tool to do this even better! Read the review below from Robin Good:
From fellow curator Robin Good: Tagxedo is a great, free web-based tool that allows you to create stunning covers, images for articles or posters, based exclusively on words.
You can either input the words yourself, or provide a website URL, a Twitter account, a news or web search and Tagxedo will create a "word cloud" by tapping into that word "universe".
There dozens of different controls to customize your word-art creations including the ability to change layout, fonts, colors, shapes and even density of your artwork.
The final work can be shared easily on social media or saved in your preferred graphic file format (jpg or png) and at your desired resolution.
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
Hackastory Tools, como su nombre lo indica ofrece, según indica 85 herramientas para realizar diferentes acciones, por lo que la considero útil para los múltiples propósitos.