Digital Education, quando lo Storytelling è parte della cura

The convention: Digital Education: a new paradigm for the future challenges that took place in April in the Auditorium Cavallerizza Reale of the University of Turin emphasised the potential of Storytelling. In the age of Big Data, the narration has been rediscovered as important means for organising the chaos, the big numbers and the large amount of information that we find on the Web… but not only. In fact, the narration becomes fundamental also in the fields of public health and education.

The Storytelling, a British term that means both narrative and narration understood as act of telling a story, emerges in today’s world with a new vitality, even if it has very long-standing roots: since ancient times, narration has been the instrument through which humankind structured reality. It has always been the most practical, socially adaptable, immediate and direct form to structure human experience. The novel and the short story offer what is not visible for essays and academic writings, they expand the kingdom of what can be told, they dive in particulars but at the same time they underline the universality of some human condition.

Lo Storytelling si fa Digital

The Digital Storytelling, the digitalised form of the short story that combines the potentialities of the digital medium with the value of  narrative, applies today to many disciplines: creative writing, sociology, psychology and medicine. One of the assets of the DS, in fact, is the ability to involve both at cognitive and emotional level. On the occasion of the convention Digital Education: a new paradigm for the future challenges and of the workshop leaded by Barbara Bruschi and Vincenzo Alatra, these particular abilities of Digital Storytelling have been discussed. The digital narration becomes a new instrument for those who operate in the field of Public Health and Education.

Barbara Bruschi , professor for Education and Learning technologies at the University of Turin underlined that narration, integrated with the use of voice, pictures and an audio support, are particularly important in the treatment of a patient. In fact, Digital Storytelling allows to highlight one’s fears, by showing them to the other and to oneself.

Benefits deriving from Digital Storytelling are not limited to patients but involve also health workers and educators. As Bruschi explains: “With 15 educators from the education services of the City of Turin we gave a new sense of the educational profession. People that had completely forgotten 40 years of professional life could find again the dimension of professional resistance also thanks to the pictures”.