Once Upon a Time: Using New Narratives in Educational Web Sites

Storytelling -- our civilization's's oldest technology for sharing ideas -- continues to offer effective techniques for reaching audiences through the Web. Museums developing online content can leverage the power of storytelling to create educational experiences that are both more cohesive and more engaging to the user. Just as the cinema and the television developed their own unique approaches to storytelling, the Web offers new techniques for extending this most ancient of technologies. This paper will examine several new narrative models which have been used to bring educational content to life on the Web.