I had a lot of fun creating this digital story! It's about 5 minutes, which I know is longer than a digital story is typically meant to be... but that's how long I needed... so I left it at that!
It's the lighthearted story of a girl named Nerva, who's frightened of just about everything. In the story, she battles with her fear of water... as well as a few other things.
Although it's a made-up story and it isn't really about me... there are a number of elements from my own life that influenced it. Living in cold, rainy, gray Holland made me a bit of a hermit there during all but the summer months. And the irony of me recently moving to a small island in the Mediterranean and being afraid of boating and swimming in open waters hasn't been lost on me lately! Water is a symbol of life - so, for me - the story is less about aquaphobia and more about how any strong fear can affect a person's ability to live life to the fullest.
In addition to the narration, the story demonstrates the power of the personalization principle in its character development. Even stick figures and rudimentarily drawn characters can invoke emotional responses from a viewer. That's one of the reasons that character development is so important in story-telling. The more the audience sympathizes with the character, and the more realistically the character behaves, the more the viewer can get lost in the story and suspend their disbelief. Creating this digital story helped me to make a stronger link between the importance of character development in storytelling, movie-making and theater and why this principle can be so effective in multimedia tools and presentations. The idea is essentially the same. Our ability to sympathize so much with a make-believe movie character can bring us to tears and perhaps identifying with a human-like multimedia character can bring us to learn!
I hope you enjoy my story...
It's the lighthearted story of a girl named Nerva, who's frightened of just about everything. In the story, she battles with her fear of water... as well as a few other things.
Although it's a made-up story and it isn't really about me... there are a number of elements from my own life that influenced it. Living in cold, rainy, gray Holland made me a bit of a hermit there during all but the summer months. And the irony of me recently moving to a small island in the Mediterranean and being afraid of boating and swimming in open waters hasn't been lost on me lately! Water is a symbol of life - so, for me - the story is less about aquaphobia and more about how any strong fear can affect a person's ability to live life to the fullest.
In addition to the narration, the story demonstrates the power of the personalization principle in its character development. Even stick figures and rudimentarily drawn characters can invoke emotional responses from a viewer. That's one of the reasons that character development is so important in story-telling. The more the audience sympathizes with the character, and the more realistically the character behaves, the more the viewer can get lost in the story and suspend their disbelief. Creating this digital story helped me to make a stronger link between the importance of character development in storytelling, movie-making and theater and why this principle can be so effective in multimedia tools and presentations. The idea is essentially the same. Our ability to sympathize so much with a make-believe movie character can bring us to tears and perhaps identifying with a human-like multimedia character can bring us to learn!
I hope you enjoy my story...