12 C O N T E X T 1 3 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 4 Digital storytelling at the annual school This year the IHBC annual school piloted a project to encourage delegates to use digital technology to share their school experience, taking photographs, making posts on social media, and creating videos and audio files. I am a conservation professional and town planner by trade, but I also have a background in education and creative media practice. I really enjoy helping people engage with conservation and heritage in creative ways through arts activities and digital projects, so was delighted to be able to bring all my passions together to help deliver the first ‘digital school’ for the IHBC. As conservation professionals we need to be good communicators. One moment we can be speaking to the manager of a large estate about alterations that they wish to make to their listed gatehouse, discussing the most appropriate repair techniques. The next we might be explaining the effects of a proposed conservation area designation to members of the community and seeking views on its implementation. These interactions will require different approaches and presentation methods, while holding true to one’s own conservation philosophy and ethics. Social media is a little like this. It can help us communicate in a short and snappy way, or by using a combination of words and visuals to capture the essence of a discussion.This can allow dialogue with people who are expert in their field and also those who we may never meet but are interested in the topics we discuss. I managed the Twitter account for @IHBCTweet for the school, using Tweetdeck, where you can set up feeds showing all the posts on a particular topic (in our case IHBC and IHBCTweet). Some delegates posted things as the conference progressed, in effect creating a continuing narrative of events as they happen, which anyone can tune into. Our hashtag (topic word) ‘#ihbc-tweet’ was trending not just in Edinburgh, but also north east England and London, which means that others who were not at the school were also contributing their thoughts. I also set up a school Audioboo account; we shared interviews with delegates and highlights of the Artland and Orkney walking tours. From a logistical point of view, one of the main challenges of the digital school was encouraging people to take part. Access to wifi at the venues helped, so people could post things freely. This was slightly more of a challenge in Orkney than Edinburgh, but I generally managed to find a helpful café where I could keep an eye on posts and send out things at the end of the day. A further challenge of the digital school is that the For those not accustomed to online conference reporting, I felt it was important to create a digital record of what everyone posted for the school, but in an accessible way where you did not need any accounts (just an internet connection) to view the posts. Storify is an excellent way to do this. I collated information from the official programme and inputted links from everyone’s public postings from each day, allowing everyone to see them in one place. It is a little like an online newspaper: you just scroll down the pages to continue reading, and everything is in sequential order. The digital reporting is meant to complement rather than replace the normal write-up of the school events in Context. It has been a wonderful privilege to be involved with the first digital school pilot, and to see the creativity and enthusiasm of so many delegates helping to spread the message of the IHBC’s work. Digital equipment used: mobile phones, digital cameras, iPads, laptops, wifi (or phone connections), iRigMic (external microphone which connects to phones or tablets to help create better sound) and headphones. Programmes used: Tweetdeck, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Audioboo, Vine, Flickr, Storify,YouTube and YouTube capture, voice memo function on phone, audio editing package (Adobe Audition, free versions include Audacity or Audioboo uploader), and video editing package (iMovie/Premiere Pro, free versions includeWindows Movie Maker andVideoPad). The digital pilot in numbers: 1,826 tweets on #ihbc-tweet; 102 new Twitter followers (during June 2014); 83 Flickr posts; 15 Audioboos; 18 videos; 477 Facebook posts; 25 LinkedIn posts; and four Storify stories. Alison McCandlish The digital media hub: Alison McCandlish and Euan Leitch at the back of the lecture hall, providing live coverage of the day school
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