Brian Leaf is an Assistant Professor and the Instructional Design Librarian in University Libraries. He was introduced to digital storytelling as a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill as the first treasurer of the Carolina Digital Story Lab organization in 2010. But his first immersive experience came in 2012 when he participated in a Mobile Digital Storytelling Workshop facilitated by Joe Lambert, founder of the Center for Digital Storytelling, and Robin Elliot of the [murmur] project. It was an experience he enjoyed as it allowed him to combine the academic with the skills he developed as a former high school percussion ensemble instructor and arranger.
In 2013, his research and thinking around information literacy led him to view digital storytelling as an ideal instructional model, and he decided at the point to join the team. During the 2013-2014 year, he assisted with a course on digital storytelling, co-facilitated six workshops, and worked with a curator to design a digital storytelling course situated in the Medical Heritage Center. His favorite parts of the process include managing the Story Circle and assisting others in finding the perfect sounds for their stories. He also assisted faculty with digital media projects. Brian is the interim coordinator for the OSU Digital Storytelling Program after the departure of co-founder Karen Diaz. He can be reached for consultation at leaf.7@osu.edu.
Queenie Chow manages the Digital Union as part of her work for the Office of Distance and eLearning. Having taught several workshops relating to multimedia production such as Digital video and image editing, creating websites in U.osu (WordPress), iPad Productivity, and Digital Presentation Techniques, she loves finding new tools as well as new ways to use current tools.
Elena Foulis is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. She teaches courses in Service-Learning where she incorporates Digital storytelling to document students civic engagement. She finds this teaching tool to be a very effective way to help her students personally connect to the community and reflect upon their learning. She has attended digital storytelling workshops at OSU and, most recently, at the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, CA in 2015.
MJ Abell is a Learning and Development Specialist in the Office of Human Resources. She develops and leads workshops on management and personal development topics, including handling difficult conversations, mentoring, personal branding, and reframing your ideas. She is also a poet and a SoulCollage® facilitator, helping people create simple collages that express the different pieces and parts of themselves and their lives.
In digital storytelling, she has found a new, rewarding way to bring images and words together and add another layer with music. She creates stories for educational purposes and for self-expression. She is very committed to helping people find their stories, express them, and share them.
Laura Seeger is the Web and eLearning Manager in the Goldberg Center at the Department of History. Within that role, she also creates departmental videos for the web. One of the missions of the Goldberg Center is to promote the best strategies for teaching with technology. She enjoys working with history faculty to incorporate technology projects in the classroom, including digital storytelling. She finds helping history students embrace their creative sides via digital stories very rewarding.
Ruth Sesco is a program coordinator for Outreach and Engagement in The Ohio State University Libraries and manages much of the scheduling, registration and logistics for the Digital Storytelling team. Ruth is also an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Humanities at Columbus State Community College in Columbus, Ohio. In 2007 she designed a procedural model to internationalize the OSU curriculum through segmented modules of interactive coursework and piloted it through a course development grant. She assisted in developing the Gateway Interactive Seed Module Grant Program that was modeled on her design and served as coordinator of the program. She can be reached at Sesco.3@osu.edu or rsesco@cscc.edu.