Explore Digital Storytelling With New Eight-Week Course

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 11, 2012) — A new course designed to help students develop and refine digital storytelling skills with mobile technologies is being offered at the University of Kentucky during the Summer Eight-Week Session, starting Thursday, June 7. 

The three-credit course, "iStorytelling" (CIS 191-020), has no prerequisites and is open to any UK student regardless of major. Students will be required to have access to an iPhone or iPad and will need to purchase the ReelDirector app ($1.99).

"With the advent of the iPhone and the iPad, citizens have discovered new ways of gathering stories, producing them, publishing them online, and measuring their impact," said Buck Ryan, associate professor of journalism, who is co-teaching the course with David Stephenson, Kentucky Kernel photojournalism adviser. "This course provides students with a hands-on introduction to citizen journalism in the 21st century."

Students in iStorytelling will capture images, video and audio, edit material, add music or voice-overs, and upload complete multimedia story packages to YouTube, all through their mobile devices. They will learn about other apps to improve content gathering, photography and other storytelling skills.

The course meets twice a week, from 1-3:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Class time will include instruction on storytelling techniques and presentations by guest speakers who use iPhones and iPads for storytelling in their careers. During the course, students will produce a portfolio of finished work, an "adventure blog" that allows them to flex their storytelling skills, and a final paper that will constitute an "iStorytelling Survival Guide."

This course does not fulfill requirements for the ISC, JOU or MAS majors. It also does not count toward the 65 credits of liberal arts required for those majors.  Students in ISC, JOU and MAS are allowed 15 credits of courses outside the School of Journalism and Telecommunications that are not liberal arts courses; this course would count toward that portion of the student's degree requirements.

Enrollment is limited to 25 students. For more information, please contact Buck Ryan at buck.ryan@uky.edu.

MEDIA CONTACT: Keith Hautala, (859) 323-2396; keith.hautala@uky.edu