digital stories in university and in life

University of Houston has a format for students to make digital content as part of their work, and distribute it on Itunes and other channels. See it here.

This implies that the action of narrative and story telling is educationally valid as a part of Higher Ed. Do I agree ? I guess I do. Up to a point. If students qualify for employment by telling stories skillfully, it leads us to a society, and intellctual paradigms, that are becoming less analytical and therefore less applicable, and more based on tales, reports and structures of specific personal experience, so perhaps more immediate.

In a strange way, then, digital technology is taking us away from the rational, enlightened, technocratic connectable world, and back into a distinction world of private stories and myths.

I liked Houston's citation of Daniel Meadows' paeon to what all this means:
"multimedia sonnets from the people" in which "photographs discover the talkies, and the stories told assemble in the ether as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a gaggle of invisible histories which, when viewed together, tell the bigger story of our time, the story that defines who we are."

Daniel is a discovery - thanks Houston ! - and is based in Wales; and here's a lovely little digital story he did about editing and meaning. Click here

This is unlocking some new possibilities for African Digital Diaries. So digital, that the next batch of stories are making their way by post from South Africa right now, on a CD, in an envelope.