The creative task for my Future of Storytelling course this week was quite interesting – doing a video presentation about my three favorite inspirational books, films or what.
Pity I’m technologically impaired at the moment – a power surge cooked my USB mike and all that.
And so, back to basics – a PowerPoint presentation, shared through SlideShare.
Here it goes.
Enjoy!
I’m taking part in a strange experiment.
As part of my online course on The Future of Storytelling, the 50.000-odd students were asked last week to create a character, give him/her/it a web presence, and let them interact with each other.
So, during this week, some 50.000 imaginary web citizens entered or will enter the net – as Facebook profiles, as blogs, as G+ identities, as tumblrs, as e-mail addresses, as podcasts.
They are out there, or will be soon, interacting with each other, and with… you.
With us.
There will be stories born.
There will be stories, I think, developed across the media landscape – a weird, heady mix of storytelling, multimedia and roleplaying game.
Now, admittedly – setting up a character with a virtual life is no laughing matter.
It takes time, imagination, effort.
Outlining the character was simple and fun – I picked an old character from some stories I wrote 30 years ago.
But then translating it to the web in a believable way… ouch!
It’s a chore – I got bogged down in passwords, nicknames, whistles and bells.
But the results… ah, the results will be fun.
Of that I’m almost certain.
Despite my free time becoming more and more scarce as a lot of deadlines loom closer, I went and I enrolled myself in an online university course.
The course is interdisciplinary in nature, and is called The Future of Storytelling.
It was designed by the University of Applied Sciences of Potsdam, and is hosted on the Iversity platform.
This is a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC), and I am one of the 50.000 students worldwide taking part in the course.
The reasons why I am sacrificing my precious free time for this course are many, but basically I am intrigued by the idea of the Future of storytelling, by the interaction of stories and media, and also, with each passing day, I feel storytelling might after all be my future.
Also, the idea of taking part in an interdisciplinary course with a student population the size of a small town was quite exciting.
So, I went and signed up.
It will not be a painful sacrifice at all.
As part of the course, participants are given weekly creative tasks, to put the contents of each set of lecture into focus.
We are also invited to share these tasks with other students.
I’ll be posting my tasks here on Karavansara – both because it’s a valid option offered by the course designers, and because I believe in the value of growing up in public.
The first work I’ll be doing for the course, goes up tomorrow.
Just wanted to warn you guys out there.
Karavansara 