1.
Making and telling a good
story with Storify
Sue Beckingham | @suebecks
MELSIG Digital Narratives: (re)storying learning experiences for a digital age #melsigNTU

2.
https://storify.com/

3.
Using Storify
• The workshop will look at Storify and how is
has been used to support learning. It will
consider the range of media that can be
incorporated and how this can be used to
construct rich narratives.
• Digital Narratives
• Event: Digital Narratives: (re)storying
learning experiences for a digital age
Date: Friday 8th January 2016
Time: 0900-1600
Location: Nottingham Trent University

4.
History
Storify is the brainchild of former AP reporter Burt
Herman and his co-founder Xavier Damann. It was
first introduced in private beta form in September
2010 as a finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt and went on
to win the Start-up Accelerator at South by
Southwest in 2011 and the Interactive Award in 2012
(Mashable coverage).
The public beta went live in late April 2011. Storify
was acquired by Livefyre in September 2013.

5.
What is Storify?
Storify is a free tool that enables the user to
curate information from social networks to
build social stories, bringing together a
variety of different media that is scattered
across the Web.
It provides a space to then add an additional
layer by adding a narrative.

6.
How is Storify useful?
Storify enables the user to create a multimedia
digital narrative that is interactive and social
Each story can be shared as a URL link
Each element of the story can also be individually
shared
It is a useful way to amplify the voices of the
originators
Helps develop better web searching skills
Incorporate multimedia (video, photos, tweets,
online sources) with original writing

7.
Attributions
By using Storify, it's possible to cite content
from others who are part of an online
discussion or at the spot of an actual event
while adding further text to provide
clarifications and context from your end.

8.
• Curate tweets shared during a
conference
• Aggregate a timeline of events
• Reactions to important stories
and breaking news
• Live tweeting and eye witness
reports
Using Storify to capture events
• Gather social media responses
about an event
• Curate the history of a given
event as a timeline
• Create a narrative that can help
readers makes sense of an
event

9.
• A research/topic based post
• Create multimedia how to
guides
• Develop an annotated
bibliography
• Curate key points from a
lecture by note taking
using Twitter and gathering
as a story
• Build a digital CV
Uses for Storify in the
Classroom

10.
Examples from my Digital
Marketing module

11.
Curating a Tweetchat

12.
Curating an event

13.
Using Storify as a Teacher
Create a digital hand-out of
readings or videos with
questions to respond to
Curate a collection of videos
you want to play during a class
Raise a question on Twitter
and curate the responses
as a story
Hold a Q&A tweetchat
and curate the dialogue
Develop a class plan

14.
Co-plan new teaching
approaches

15.
More examples of using
Storify
• Jesse’s Storify Projects:
The Anatomy of Digital Humanities (#dighum) and Digital Pedagogy (#digped): Sifting through and
storifying this conversation on Twitter quickly became an exercise in dissecting the many layers of Digital
Humanities and Digital Pedagogy. It also made me realize just how elaborate (but still focused) the
threads of a Twitter discussion can be.
• The Pedagogy of Public Work: Is FERPA just a red herring?: The question posed: What is the
pedagogical benefit of having students doing public work? Is FERPA just a red herring? A #digped
discussion that started on a Monday morning and devolved into a fierce debate during the wee hours of a
Monday night.
• What Does Twitter Do for the Digital Humanities?: The conversation began late on a Friday night with
a question: Where is the online conversation about digital humanities happening? Facebook or Twitter?
Why?
• Pete’s Storify Projects:
#Occupclass Discusses Mike Daisey, Journalism, and the Truth: After listening to This American
Life’s “Mike Daisey and the Apple Factory” and the follow up “Retraction,” my #Occupyclass (Electronic
Writing and Publishing) had a spirited class discussion to blow off some steam and reflect on our own
quasi-journalistic practices. This thread resulted from the backchannel.
• Practical Grammar “Live Language” Exercise: I asked pairs of students in my ENGL 3105 (Practical
Grammar) course to tweet sentences from news media that included a verbal (infinitive, gerund, or
participial phrase), then to identify the verbals in others’ sentences. We discussed the analysis on a
presentation board using Twitter.
• Twitter for Academics: Advice from the Users: In my first of three workshops on Twitter for Scholars
this semester, I threw a question out on Twitter an hour before the session: What advice do you have for
new Twitter users in the academy? The response was fantastic.
http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/how-to-storify-why-to-storify/

16.
Creating a Storify
The first thing you will see is this "Create a Story"
screen. The left-hand side is where you build the
story and the right-hand side of the screen
contains a list of social media elements.

17.
How does Storify work?
Users search through
multiple social
networks from one
place, and then drag
individual elements
into stories. Each
keeps the original
links and functionality.

18.
Storify storyboard
Drag elements across to the left. Click between elements to add a
text box and build your own narrative.

19.
Channels to search
You can search for
content from Twitter,
Instagram, Facebook,
YouTube, Gifs, Flickr,
Getty images and
there's also an option
to paste in specific
URLs. The sign at
the right reveals more
options in a drop down
menu

20.
Reorder Storify elements

21.
Sharing Storify
Once users have selected their chosen photos,
video, tweets etc., added the optional narrative,
they can publish and share their digital narratives
via social networks or by email using the URL.

22.
Storify templates
There are three ways to display your story

23.
Find and follow friends
https://storify.com/friends

24.
Authorising
If this is your first time using the Storify story editor,
you might notice that a connection to Twitter,
Facebook or Instagram is required to search those
areas and add their information to your Storify
stories.
This because Storify searches these services via
their "Search APIs." and any requests for their
information (such as a search) must come from an
"authorised" account.

25.
Storify bookmarklet
This can be found at https://storify.com/tools
The Chrome extension adds an even richer
experience. You can add the Storify
extension to gather not only tweets, but
most Web content right at the source.

26.
Storify bookmarklet

27.
Storify bookmarklet
You can then click the bookmarklet from any Web
page to get a link to the page. You can also select
any text on the page and that will appear as a
nicely formatted quote to be part of the story.
Once installed, you'll see Storify icons on the
bottom of things like tweets or Facebook posts
when browsing those sites. Simply click these to
send them straight to your Storify account

28.
Storify bookmarklet

29.
Storify a page

30.
Storify a selection
Right click and select 'Storify this selection'

31.
Storify bookmarklet
You can only bookmark public information

32.
Saved Storify elements

33.
Search published stories

34.
Save Tweets within Twitter

35.
Summary
Search
Select a network and search for social media
content.
Add content
Drag the best elements into your story and add your
own narrative.
Share
Via your chosen social networks or by sharing the
URL

36.
Useful Storify links
https://storify.com/storify/using-the-storify-
chrome-extension
https://storify.com/tools

37.
Wordpress.org plugin
https://wordpress.org/plugins/storify/faq/
After installing our new Storify WordPress plugin, you will be able to select
Storify from the left side of the WordPress dashboard or from the “New”
menu at the top. Then create a story. When you click “Publish,” your stories
will automatically post to your WordPress blog and your Storify account!

38.
Embedding a Storify

39.
Storify Activity
In small groups plan an activity that could be used with students to
create a digital narrative
Plans can be captured on a Google Doc, SoundCloud or as a
YouTube clip
Share a link to your planned activity via Twitter adding the hashtag
#melsigstorify
Ideas will then be shared with the group
Post event the tweeted plans will be curated as a Storify and shared
via Twitter using the event hashtag #melsigntu