You may have noted a little shuffling of the badges on The Digital Narrative home page. Amongst them, is a link to a digital stories page which has been buried a little deep on the site till now. I'm slowly building a catalogue of examples of some of best digital storytelling on the web. I'm after variety, and quality. If you have a suggestion, I'd love to hear it. mnjorgensen(at)gmail.com

More than just a slideshow tool, Vuvox offers a host of features (some still under construction) ... and a slightly different slant on image presentations. It allows you to build collage images, import video and other cutetricks. It's well suited to stories built using digital images. I've updated the TDN Slideshow Teaching Method page to include it. If you're looking for more traditional slideshow applications online, you can find them there.

I updated another of the Teaching Method pages today, one related to building stories with mind mapping tools online. It's something I've had great success with, and would heartily recommend. This is not planning a story you understand, but asking students to build a story using boxes and links, colors and shapes. It's a wonderful way to introduce the idea that storytelling can be a more fluid and visual experience.

I came across the Youth Media Exchange website today (and their sister site TakingITGlobal). One of my main intentions for building both Lightning Bug and The Digital Narrative, was to encourage young adults to tell their stories. The YME and Taking It Global websites are a perfect outlet for young adults wishing to explore storytelling about an issue, stories with a global focus.

I've added an additional page with some warm up exercises. PicLits and Textoriser are the new web pages suggested, great fun and very accessible.

I've been busy updating many of the pages on TDN site with new material. Some new teaching pages will be launched in the next few days as well, but for the most part I've simply been adding additional resources to existing web pages. For example, on the blogging page, I'll be adding several new blogging services I've come across particularly suitable for educational groups.

One I love is Posterous, a no-registration blog site. You simply email them at post@posterous.com with your first blog post, and you're done. A return email is sent confirming the blog address, and where to email future blog posts. It makes blogging particularly accessable to those users that are hesitant to dip their toes in the blogosphere water.