"History is from my head. Memories are from my heart."
That is the first thing that popped into my head while pondering, "What in the world is digital storytelling?" It may only make sense to me, but I think it explains a lot.
We are taught history orally or from letters/journals, books, videos/movies, the Internet, songs, and all other forms of hard documents. As technology progresses, so does the way we learn about history. To me, history is just one big story.
Memories, on the other hand, are more personal. Yes, you can relate to the stories other people tell, but memories are your own.
For example, when your mom sits down to have a heart-to-heart chat with you and tells you about all of her "wild college experiences" in hopes that you will not repeat her mistakes, what do you do? You listen intently. You laugh. You learn a lot about your mom, and gain respect for her for overcoming certain obstacles. And then you go back to college and make your own mistakes, even if they are the exact mistakes your mom made.
That is the first thing that popped into my head while pondering, "What in the world is digital storytelling?" It may only make sense to me, but I think it explains a lot.
We are taught history orally or from letters/journals, books, videos/movies, the Internet, songs, and all other forms of hard documents. As technology progresses, so does the way we learn about history. To me, history is just one big story.
Memories, on the other hand, are more personal. Yes, you can relate to the stories other people tell, but memories are your own.
For example, when your mom sits down to have a heart-to-heart chat with you and tells you about all of her "wild college experiences" in hopes that you will not repeat her mistakes, what do you do? You listen intently. You laugh. You learn a lot about your mom, and gain respect for her for overcoming certain obstacles. And then you go back to college and make your own mistakes, even if they are the exact mistakes your mom made.
WHY?!
It was just a story. Just another piece of history. You may always remember sitting around with your mom while she was telling you the story, but you never really experienced the story itself. Your memory is only in the telling of it.
I guess what I am trying to get across is that history is learned, and memories are made. Digital storytelling is no different than any other form of storytelling. It simply teaches history with a different approach.
1 comment:
Erin - this is an insightful entry. Your distinction between history and memory is a fair one and may be worth exploring further when you think about developing a premise for your story.
You raise a lot of provocative questions that are suitable to thinking more deeply about digital media. Pertaining to memory, to what extent are we 'outsourcing' our personal memories when we upload photos, blog entries and the like? And history: how has the collective construction of 'history' on sites like Wikipedia altered the 'authority' once reserved for history books and scholars?
And hang on to that opening line, "History is from my head. Memories are from my heart." We're going to talk about how poetry is at the core of all great storytelling.
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