NMD 343
Digital Storytelling for Maine’s Living Landscapes
This course invites students to become digital storytellers for a healthier, more interconnected world—beginning with the places they call home. Inspired by the ecological imagination of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, students will learn to create stories that restore relationships between people and the land, challenge extractive narratives, and spark a deeper sense of care, responsibility, and possibility.
Using digital tools—photography, audio/video for social media, and interactive mapping (StoryMap JS & ArcGIS StoryMaps)—students will craft original, place-based stories that explore Maine’s living landscapes, environmental histories, and regenerative futures. Projects center on narrative change, helping students reframe the story from depletion to renewal, from disconnection to co-evolution.
In collaboration with community partners like the Natural Resources Council of Maine, local lake associations, or forest and farm stewards, students will explore how stories shape local culture, ecology, and economy. Along the way, they’ll learn not just how to use media tools—but how to wield them with care, creativity, and purpose.
Some stories show young people facing crises with agency, hope and the power to shape their world. Take some inspiration from some of these anime classics.
After humans destroyed the environment, a toxic jungle spread across the land killing ever more people. In the Valley of the Wind, people are learning to make peace with the jungle, but war threatens to destroy all that.
Many years ago a comet destroyed a town. It is coming again, but the boy who knows it must communicate with a girl across time to save the village. Can he defy the oblivious adults and rally the town youth to save the entire village?
Ashitaka, a young prince cursed by a demon, journeys to find a cure and becomes entangled in a conflict between the spirit of the forest, protected by Princess Mononoke, and the human settlement of Iron Town
