Digital Storytelling Week 2

    This week, I decided to take a deeper look into “Welcome to Pine Point,” created by the National Film Board of Canada in 2011. Pine Point was a mining town that, when shut down, was completely diminished and no longer exists. This digital story uses a mix of many different media, such as photographs, videos, narration, special effects, and features within the interactive “book”. The author uses an interactive scrapbook-like digital story to really engage the readers and make them feel like part of the story. Readers can flip through the pages of the scrapbook, and within each page, there is another interactive feature, such as pictures to click through that go along with the text on the page. Between the photos, videos, sound effects, and narration, you feel like you are really in Pine Point. This was one of the neatest digital storytelling projects I have seen so far in this course, and I hope to add some of these features to my own DST project. 

    The educational value from this project hits close to home as someone who was raised in a steel mill town. In my small town, everyone knows someone who works at the steel mill, and every couple of years, there is talk about the mill shutting down. When this happens, there is a specific panic that many people go into because of all that the mill does for this town. Many believe that if the mill shuts down, it will be the end of our small town, and everyone will leave. My area of expertise is elementary students, but I believe that this project could be very beneficial for high school students in my town to watch to express their concern about keeping the mill running. It could be included in an economics or history class at the high school and maybe even the middle school level. If I were to use this project for the younger elementary students, I would use this as an example for a digital scrapbook. The content within this project may be a little too complex for the younger ones. However, we create Google Slides scrapbooks, and I would be open to exploring different online tools for students to use and to use the Pine Point project as a model for students to reference with all the different interactive aspects. 

    If I were a history or journalism teacher, I think I could use this project to align with many of the content standards. For example, it could be used to teach media techniques, historical industrial towns, human geography, and digital literacy. This project also aligns with many of the ISTE Standards for Students (2016), such as Creative Communicator by communicating their knowledge through a digital scrapbook and Knowledge Constructor by taking what they have learned through research and compiling it into a digital media to share. 

    This historical documentary was created through a digital, interactive website that connects to Ohler's (2023) guidance on story connections in several ways. Ohler (2023) discussed the ideas of a “StoryCore” that includes a problem, transformation, and solution. The problem in Pine Point is the shutdown of the mine. The transformation in this story is both figurative and literal. The town is literally transformed when it is bulldozed, and figuratively when the residents have to make a change to their lives after the mine is shut down. The solution isn’t necessarily the “happy ending” that comes at the end of some stories, but in this particular story, the memory of Pine Point is left behind through this project itself. 

Story Spine

  • Once upon a time… There was a small mining town called Pine Point in Canada.

  • Every day… In the small town, people went to work at the mine and lived their lives with the people they cared about. 

  • One day… The mine shut down, and the whole town was bulldozed and essentially wiped from the map. 

  • Because of that… The residents of Pine Point scattered from what once was their town, with only their memories of the town left. 

  • Because of that… Years later, two people who remembered Pine Point posed the question: What happens to a town that disappears and the people who once lived there?

  • Every day.. The filmmakers worked to collect videos, images, and research about the town to create an interactive historical documentary through a scrapbook. 

  • Ever since then… Many people have learned about what once was Pine Point. 



References:

Comments

  1. Christina RadiciOctober 22, 2025 at 8:10 AM

    Hi Emma! You did a great job highlighting how the project´s mixed media and interactive scrapbook style create such an immersive and engaging experience. Your reflection on the project´s educational value is particularly insightful. Connecting the story of Pine Point to the real-world concerns in your own steel mill town adds a powerful, personal dimension to your critique. The ideas for using it with high school students in economics or history, and as a digital scrapbook model for elementary school students, are highly practical and show a strong grasp of how to leverage digital storytelling across different age groups. Nice job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ed TechnoOctober 25, 2025 at 1:48 PM

    Another Pine Pointer, how ya doing? Again great stories of the participants — as a fan of the genre, this didn't disappoint. Another thing is the method of presentation, I loved FLASH, I which Adobe would bring it back, sure there is HTML 5, but it is just not the same, less freedom, more code. My favorite was The Beauty Queen -- girl could sing and had fun on stage. My least favorite was The Bully, it brought back memories of a bully from middle school who used to harass people. Until one day he met a little Indian boy from a warrior tribe who put him down :).

    I hope I didn't mess up here, but I thought that the last part was supposed to be a story map of OUR upcoming memoir, not our conjecture on the map of the Pine Point read? Tired eyes, so who knows. I look forward to discovering your memoir.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ed TechnoOctober 25, 2025 at 1:50 PM

    *Wish Adobe..., not which. I WISH auto correct didn't slow us down and make ridiculous choices on our words *sigh.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Maria WatsonOctober 25, 2025 at 6:13 PM

    Hello Emma,

    I really enjoyed reading your reflection and connection to the project. Your personal connection to the topic makes your insight especially meaningful. I agree that this type of project could be very impactful for high school students in your community, as it allows them to explore real-life economic and social issues that directly affect their lives. I also like your idea of adapting it for younger students through a digital scrapbook; it’s a creative way to introduce storytelling and digital literacy while keeping the content age-appropriate. Using the Pine Point project as a model for interactive design is an excellent approach to help students engage with digital tools in meaningful ways.

    ReplyDelete

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