Multi-Modalities = greater story comprehension

Multi-Modalities provide different instructional media opportunities for the benefit of multiple learning styles. Whether the viewer best learns through audio, visual or text does not matter. The same basic story elements are repeated across modalities.

Multimodality - Tie it together

How to Visually 'Rock' your keywords with Wordle - Cross Digital Storytelling

I felt that the word cloud for this article was accurate and with the exception that I did not identify Weiler and would disagree with not including 'Content Creation' or 'Transmedia'. It is vital to build stories that cause feeling and resonance which will thereby create an experience that last when reading your work.

What is Cross-Media Storytelling - A Storify experiment

*Google Photo - Creative Commons

If you have a computer and you have searched the web, you have unconsciously been reading and experiencing cross-media storytelling for years! Using multiple platforms such as: Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and other social media platforms, digital technology has slowly been changing the way we read, interpret and experience the world.

I undertook to explain to an average person the concept of cross-media storytelling using a multi-modal approach through the use of Storify as a visual pathway to understanding the concept, execution and reasons for the changes in our storytelling world.



Research resources chosen: I attempted to conceptualize/visualize my research using information from both experts and professionals in the media/social media/marketing fields.

Platform resources included: Twitter, Blogs, Infographics, YouTube, TedTalk and resources from our course. My Research tools: Storify medium for searches. 

•  Twitter Hashtag tracking: Used to find interesting conversations and posts about my topic matter: #Digitalstorytelling, #Transmediastorytelling #crossmedia. Although difficult at first due to a sensitive case issue with hashtag searches, I finally found a number of sources that proved fruitful and selected one that would fit the educational and entertaining experiential tone of the piece.
• Google: Used Google search in Storify by searching terms such: Digital Narrative, Cross-Media Storytelling, Trans-media and finally found some great blogs and videos that would be appropriate to the flow and information set I wanted while being visually compelling where possible. Pictures - I used Google to search for creative commons pictures.
•  Links - I also attached Hyperlinks where I wished to provide an outsource to the information and finally provide a link to my Twitter site for following with a call to action to conclude.

Storify Experience- The platform has been purchased and therefor has changed a great deal in the last few months and has taken away some of the customization options previously offered. I certainly found it a lot more cumbersome to work with than previous projects. I certainly think that the topic could easily expand into a paper and the possible inclusions are endless.

'These Waves of Girls' - She was warned...

The Blog itself was appropriately titled the content was like being tossed on the waves of the ocean in that, the messages conveyed were somewhat random and wandering. In the article that we read, we felt that the nature of this wandering and the links therein took away from the narrative, rather than adding to it.

The character does describe herself as 'Drunk' in the text on Black Russians' and 'high on Mushrooms' which, in light of the wandering nature of the text leads one to wonder....Is the text meant to be the ramblings of a drunk/high  girl of 15?

Visuals
The visual nature of the blog made it difficult to read the text at times and we additionally had difficulty deciphering who the narrator was: Tammy, (the Slut - which is never referred to again beyond the preface of the title and therefor relates to nothing) or Vivian who, would appear to be a by-stander to Tammy losing her teeth?
In relation to the title 'She was Warned' at no time was there a warning in the text - therefor, the message expectation does not deliver and misleading.

Links
We chose not to 'engage' with more than one link in the trans-media piece which was influenced by a an epic 'Fail' on the content of the first link - which shed little insight into the story itself and was not a an experience leading back to the overarching story - just more seemingly 'random rambling'.

The links are used to displace you - as an exemplification of where the character is mentally, for her age and state in life.

The Links do however provide another recourse for stories and characters but, are not necessarily connected to the actual story you were in. The pieces are stand alone but may lend background on the protagonist herself - Tammy?


Samantha Lau's blog provides additional background analysis on the thematic nature of 'The Waves of Girls' providing the connection between sexuality, structure and the abstract nature of the graphics within this blog that may be of interest to readers of this piece. Samantha Lau's Critical review

Written By: Crystal Armstrong, Kristin Black, Louise McEachern