The most engaging keynote that I saw at the AATE conference would have to be Daniel Meadows’ presentation ‘New Literacies for the Digital Age’. Daniel is an artist/photographer/storyteller from way back, and his keynote was about the power of storytelling, specifically the power of the digi-story.
A digital story, or digi-story, is a story that is told using a series of photos or other images, with narration and other sound layered over the top. Ideally they should only be about 2 minutes long, and use about a dozen images and a narration of about 250 words.
Daniel shared a number of digi-stories of his own, and from the Capture Wales project – what was refreshing was that his keynote was actually based on these digi-stories, with short explanations in between each to provide context, to highlight theoretical frames and positions, and make connections between the stories. I was so inspired by Daniel’s keynote that now I plan to use digi-stories in my year 9 class next term. I’ll still be basing next term’s work around ‘making meaning’, and the first 5 weeks will definitely still be focused on video games. But now in the second half of term, rather than students using a collection of digital resources for composing, I’m going to get them to make a digi-story!
Kelli McGraw 
#1 by darcymoore on July 12, 2008 - 5:19 pm
How exciting and achievable. Y9 will love it and I have bookmarked all the links posted. Cheers.
#2 by Gareth Morlais on July 15, 2008 - 7:06 pm
As a former colleague of Daniel’s at Capture Wales, I’m delighted his keynote was so well-received. He speaks about digital storytelling with such passion and experience. Good luck with your plans to get your own students going with DS Kelli.
#3 by kellimcgraw on July 24, 2008 - 12:38 am
Thanks so much Gareth 🙂 I’ve added your blog and Daniel’s site to my blog roll – a couple of teachers at school are already asking me for resources so they can look into digital storytelling as well, so here’s hoping the fever spreads!