Several weeks ago I attended a three-day workshop offered by the Center for Digital Storytelling. The subject was audio slideshows, a.k.a. “digital stories.” My reason for going was an interest in making short audio-visual pieces for this blog, telling stories from Penland students and instructors. However, the workshop is structured around first-person stories (they want you to “tell a story that only you can tell”), so I decided to tell a Penland story of my own.

The story comes from a photography class I taught in 2008. The class was called “A Day in the Life,” and you can see a slideshow of the whole class project here. The video above has to do with something important I learned while teaching the class.

If this style of media interests you, I can highly recommend the CDS workshop (they teach them in several different locations). You can see many other pieces made in their workshops on the CDS YouTube page.  Many thanks to our excellent leaders Stefani Sese and Lisa Haynes and to all the great people who took the workshop with me — they were so supportive and generous, I thought I was at Penland.

–Robin Dreyer, communications manager