A self on a screen: Visioning community and context through digital storytelling mediaejournal.org/a-self-on-a-screen-visioning-community-and-context-through-digital-storytelling/ Mediterranean e-journal of Communication & Media, 2015 Vol.3 No.1 Professor Tara Brabazon Professor of Education and Head of the School of Teacher Education Charles Sturt University, Australia and Canada Email: tbrabazon@csu.edu.au Abstract: This article enters the decade-old field of digital storytelling and demonstrates its capacity for teaching and learning, particularly when teaching politically volatile topics and integrated curricula initiatives. My research provides not only a rationale and commentary on the potential of digitization, but demonstrates effective methods to embed digital storytelling process in the classroom. The risks to and for disempowered communities are revealed alongside the value of students claiming their own voice and views. Keywords: Digital storytelling, visual literacy, sonic media, sensory history, social media, interface cultures My father Kevin, at the spritely 87 years of age, has a strategy to manage difficult family conversations about people, politics or religion. Whenever particular topics become too uncomfortable, he responds with a flourish: “let’s talk about something important. Let’s talk about me.” Such a rejoinder is less about ego and more about reducing the disquiet that emerges when confronting emotional issues and disparate views. Teaching and learning are derived from intricate and difficult personal experiences and reflections but must transcend them. Teachers and students – at their most powerful – welcome differences and disquiet, while respecting what we can learn from them. Demanding knowledge about race, nationalism, colonization, gender and sexuality are integral to learning in and for a multicultural nation. The key question in our Facebook age is how to grasp the textures and filaments of our lives, but also how these threads connect with the wider tapestry of history, geography and knowledge. The pivotal challenge for teachers is finding strategies that motivate students to seek and connect information from the past with their lives in the present. The read write web reveals powerful opportunities for the development of a productive and creative relationship between students and scholarship, ideas and interpretation. Stories are part of human history. They carry ideas through time. In analogue environments, parents tell stories to their children about rules and responsibilities, offering context and warning. Digitization has transformed how we shape and structure the tragedies and joys of life. Selfies record a special hairstyle, new eye shadow or interesting shoes. Instagram marks the minutiae of life and identity for a (small or large) audience. Snapchat performs the ephemera of digitization, sharing and then dissolving a visual message. Songs, YouTube videos, photographs, tweets, blogs and Facebook posts assemble a version of a lived self. Through social networking sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr and Pinterest – the online pinup board – we not only consume stories, but produce them. Telling stories and sharing experiences are not new. Hardware and software have changed how these stories are constructed and disseminated. Conversely, Kay Teehan argued that students, rather than software, have changed. 1/12