Tweetable Stories

17 Tweets.

Tweeting my final project was a challenge but in the end, like all of the projects for this class, I feel more liberated and changed than I did before the start of Visual Research Methods.

If there is one thing I have learned after researching and discovering not only my grandmother's but also my own story is that storytelling is truly, universal.

Where does the simple, "old school" ORAL story end and the new digital, tech-savy story begin? When do mediums shift? When do stories evolve?

It's easy to say that my grandmother's story is weaved into my essence as both a person and scholar. To say that she has played a large role in my life is an understatement and where modern language to me, fails.

However, where modern language and storytelling fails, I believe the digital begins. Digital storytelling allows stories, both like my grandmothers and my own, a whole new medium to reach people. Where digital technology changed the way my grandmother told her story, Twitter changed the way I can both listen and then re-tell my own story in context of my grandmothers.

I posted 17 tweets, each with pictures, videos, links to my grandmother's own digital story housed on Wisconsin Public Television's "Wisconsin Stories" site and to the book Digital storytelling, Mediatized Stories: Self-Representations in New Media.

If you are unfamiliar with Twitter it prohibits the amount of characters to 140 in each Tweet. Although I tried to stay within this framework, I sometimes had to post my Tweet with TwitLonger. There is a preview of the Tweet and then it has a link. The link takes you to the rest of the Tweet and if there is a picture/video attached that too is linked and will direct you to the appropriate YouTube/TwitPic Webpage.

All in all, Tweeting my final paper was challenging but more importantly it showed to me how FAR story telling has come. From the oral, to the digital and now to the Tweetable. Stories just like technology evolve.

I would be lying if I didn't say that I will be coming back to this post for years to come for one reason: To hear my grandmother's voice. My grandmother recently passed away this summer and if there is one thing that I miss about her, it's her voice. It always pushed me, inspired me and made me believe in miracles since I was a little child.

Her voice now lives on, thanks to Digital Technology and for that, I will be forever grateful.

I hope you enjoy her story, along with the others in the series, as much as I do!

Happy Tweeding :

http://twitter.com/StoriesofSelf

Gurl, Please

This is a call out.
This is a statement.
This is a rant.

Know the history,
Before you "speak" your mind.
Know the history,
and not just the HBO special.
Know the history,
from the actual archives.

Don't think this isn't a call out.
Because it is.
Don't think that I don't know your pissed,
Because I do.
Don't think that I didn't expect this,
Because I did.
Don't Think that I'm not listening,
Because I Am.
Don't Think that I don't understand you,
Because I do.

Don't think that anger doesn't come from a place within,
Because it does.

This is a call out,
to you, to them, to us.
This is a call out,
to tell you to know the facts,
your power,
your story,
BEFORE
you speak.

This is a call out,
plain and simple.