Teaching and Learning Web 2.0 StorytellingEmergence of a New Genre By Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine story has a beginning, a middle, and a cleanly wrapped-up end- ing. Whether told around a campfire, read from a book, or played on a DVD, a story goes from point A to B and then C. It follows a trajectory, a Freytag Pyramid—perhaps the line of a human life or the stages of the hero’s journey. A story is told by one person or by a creative team to an audience that is usually quiet, even receptive. Or at least that’s what a story used to be, and that’s how a story used to be told. Today, with digital net- Aworks and social media, this pattern is changing. Stories now are open-ended, branching, hyperlinked, cross-media, participatory, exploratory, and unpre- dictable. And they are told in new ways: Web 2.0 storytelling picks up these new types of stories and runs with them, accelerating the pace of creation and participation while revealing new directions for narratives to flow. Bryan Alexander is Director of Research at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE, http:// nitle.org). He blogs at <http://b2e.nitle.org/>. Alan Levine is Vice President, Community, and Chief Technology Officer for the New Media Consortium (NMC). He barks about technology at <http://cogdog blog.com>. 40 EDUCAUSE r e v i e w - November/December 2008 © 2008 Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine Illustration by David Lesh, © 2008 Definitions and Histories such as Dreamweaver, an arcane method connections in between. A blogger posts What is Web 2.0 storytelling? As the phrase of FTP, and local campus web directory a reflection. Another blogger adds a com- suggests, it is the telling of stories using structures, they can now begin telling the ment to that post, with a link to a related Web 2.0 tools, technologies, and strate- world about Mideast politics or biological video. A third writes up a post on his blog gies. Since the name is fairly recent (and processes after spending only five min- (which may automatically send a “ping” to not yet widely used), it may not bear out utes learning how to use Blogger or Wiki- the original blog post as a connection). A as the best term for this trend. Another spaces. The technology thus becomes fourth describes the conversation so far name may emerge, one better suited to more transparent; attention is focused in her podcast, thus adding more com- describing this narrative domain. How- on the content. As a result, the amount of mentary. Such distributed conversations ever, the term seems to have met with rich web media and content has grown in occurred and continue to happen on quiet acknowledgment to date, so it may quantity and diversity. And any student of other web platforms and, arguably, can be serve as a useful one going forward. To history would not be surprised to observe found in other venues (e-mail listservs, further define the term, we should begin that out of those manifold ways of writing Usenet groups). But Web 2.0’s lowered by explaining what we mean by its first and showing have emerged new practices bar to content creation, combined with part: Web 2.0. Tim O’Reilly coined Web 2.0 for telling stories. increased social connectivity, ramps up in 2004,1 but the label remains difficult A second essential component to Web the ease and number of such conversa- to acceptably define. For our present 2.0 is what we used to refer to as “social tions, which are able to extend outside discussion, we will identify two essential software.” Although Web 2.0 tools now the bounds of a single environment. Dis- features that are useful in distinguish- generally offer multiple levels of pri- tributed discussion offers many points of ing Web 2.0 projects and platforms from vacy, and therefore host entry, both for readers the rest of the web: microcontent and social a growing amount of and for co-writers. And media.2 content inaccessible to it offers a new environ- The first feature, microcontent, sug- a broad audience, Web Two essential ment for storytelling. gests that authors create small chunks of 2.0 platforms are often features are useful Another influential content, with each chunk conveying a structured to be orga- in distinguishing factor of Web 2.0 is primary idea or concept.3 These pieces nized around people Web 2.0 projects findability: the use of are smaller than websites in terms of in- rather than the tradi- and platforms from comprehensive search formation architecture and are meant to tional computer hierar- the rest of the web: tools that help story be reused in multiple ways and places. chies of directory trees. creators (and readers) They are also often much smaller than Websites designed in microcontent and quickly locate related websites in terms of the amount of storage the 1990s and later of- social media. micocontent with just that each chunk takes up: blog posts, wiki fered few connecting a few keywords typed edits, YouTube comments, and Picasa points for individu- into a search field. images are usually only a few thousand als, generally speaking, Social bookmarking bytes. Some types of microcontent, ironi- other than perhaps a guestbook or a link and content tagging add more tools to cally, can be quite large from a storage to an e-mail address. But Web 2.0 tools help share or recall what has been found. perspective but are self-contained— are built to combine microcontent from With findability connected to a grow- namely, audio (podcasts), video (for web different users with a shared interest: a ing amount of media content licensed platforms, such as YouTube), or embed- blog post and a comment; a Delicious under Creative Commons (http://creative dable Flash applets. Their uploading to page for a URL with many different users commons.org/), the authoring process the web is a simple matter for the user having bookmarked the same URL; a again becomes both easier and more and does not require anything in the way group of Flickr photos from different fulfilling, with increased access to high- of web design expertise. Even creating a people connected by the common use of quality microcontent. website through Web 2.0 tools is a radi- a descriptive tag; or multiple authors in a Defining the second part of Web 2.0 cally different matter compared with the single wiki page. If readers closely exam- storytelling—that is, storytelling—is an easier days of HTML hand-coding and of mov- ine a Web 2.0 project, they will find that proposition, partly because we have a far, ing files with FTP clients. Creating Web it is often touched by multiple people, far greater tradition of recognizing and re- 2.0 content requires only making a few whether in the content creation or via as- flecting on it. Storytelling is a rare human selections from menus, choosing from sociated comments or discussion areas. If universal, present and recognizable across a variety of well-designed templates, or they participate actively, by contributing cultures and epochs. We can refer to it as adding a page name to another, already- content, we have what many call social the “art of conveying events in words, established wiki page. One outcome of media. images, and sounds often by improvisa- this authoring approach is a drastically Combining social media with micro- tion or embellishment.”4 Annette Sim- lower bar for participation and publish- content yields a series of synergistic ef- mons sees the storyteller’s empathy and ing. Although some faculty members fects, including conversations that occur sensory detail as crucial to “the unique might hesitate to learn a website editor across multiple sites and with multiple capability to tap into a complex situation 42 EDUCAUSE r e v i e w - November/December 2008 we have all experienced and which we all sential to any discussion of ethics; the Linked lexia (individual hypertext pieces) recognize.”5 A leading teacher of writing use of storytelling for surfacing implicit offered new forms of co-creation, in emphasizes the importance of characters’ information in knowledge-management which a reader would help form the story desires in a story: “Without a mobilized practice. As popularized in education, by shaping a path through it. For example, desire or fear, characters in a story—or the familiar form of digital storytelling Espen Aarseth coined the term “ergodic life—won’t be willing to is a narrated personal literature,” with ergodic being a neologism do much of anything in story of overcoming from the Greek words for “work” and the service of their great obstacles, achieving “path.”8 The spread of urban legends by longings.”6 Storytelling a dream, honoring a newsgroup posts and e-mail messages may also be seen as the deceased family mem- constitutes something akin to a body of set of cultural practices ber, or describing an folklore, building up within the Internet. for representing events event.7 Web 2.0 stories Once hypertext became prominent and chronologically. Or for are often broader: they familiar with the explosive growth of the the purposes of this ar- can represent history, web, storytelling by web pages developed ticle, we can simply re- fantasy, a presentation, a large, if underappreciated, record. This purpose U.S. Supreme a puzzle, a message, or occurred both before and alongside the Court Justice Potter something that blurs rise of Web 2.0.