About

Bernard Robin

A career spent exploring how people tell their stories with digital tools.

What Is Digital Storytelling?

This site is a comprehensive archive of digital stories related to the work of Bernard Robin, an educator whose career focused on helping students learn — and teachers teach — with multimedia technology.

Bernard's own introduction to the practice, recorded in 2009 — still a good starting point for anyone new to the idea.

An Introduction to Digital Storytelling

For a more in-depth look, see Bernard's encyclopedia entry on the subject in The International Encyclopedia of Media Literacy, co-written with Sara G. McNeil.

The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling

The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling (EUODS) homepage, with an astronaut-and-books collage illustration

Bernard created EUODS in 2004 to share his growing passion for digital storytelling. It grew into a widely used resource, winning the 2009 MERLOT Classics Award and ranking at the top of Google searches for "digital storytelling."

MERLOT 2009 Classics Award certificate, presented to Bernard R. Robin
Bernard's 2009 MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) Classics Award certificate.

Since Bernard retired from UH in 2021, the site is no longer being actively updated. It's still accessible in most web browsers, though not all — the technology behind it is now more than twenty years old and doesn't work as reliably as it once did.

Visit EUODS →

What Is OLLI?

OLLI stands for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute — a national network of member-led lifelong-learning programs for adults, hosted on university campuses. Bernard teaches through OLLI@Furman, on the campus of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.

In OLLI@Furman's own words: "OLLI@Furman is a member-led community of learners that offers an engaging and intellectually enriching curriculum of more than 130 courses per semester. As the third largest OLLI in the nation, we serve more than 2,900 senior adults in Upstate South Carolina on the campus of Furman University. Composed of vibrant learners from all walks of life, OLLI members pursue learning for connection and personal enrichment, there are no tests or grades. Our members thrive in this season of life and embody OLLI's motto, 'Where Learning Never Retires!'"

TEDx Talk

Bernard's 2013 talk at TEDxYouth@UH, introducing digital storytelling to a wider audience.

Digital Storytelling: Dr. Bernard Robin at TEDxYouth@UH
Bernard Robin

Also Teaching at OLLI: Photography

Alongside digital storytelling, Bernard has taught several photography courses at Furman OLLI — including one starting soon that brings AI tools into the mix.

Course Co-Instructor: Ray McClelland

Ray McClelland took Bernard's very first Digital Storytelling course at OLLI in 2023, and was so skilled at building his own digital stories that Bernard invited him to help teach it the following year. Ray has served as co-instructor in 2024, 2025, and 2026, and helped create several of the WeVideo Tutorials featured on this site — with more of his tutorials still to come. He'll also join Bernard as co-instructor for Navigating the AI Frontier in Photography, the new AI photography course beginning January 2027.

Selected Publications

A few of Bernard's published articles on the educational uses of digital storytelling — see the full list of 45 publications, with 100,000+ reads and nearly 5,000 citations, on his ResearchGate profile.

Doctoral Dissertations

Bernard advised doctoral students at the University of Houston for more than two decades. A few of their dissertations, rediscovered while going through his archived files, are linked below to the UH Institutional Repository where available.

Made With AI

Bernard has also experimented with AI tools to produce infographics and slide decks exploring digital storytelling concepts — a couple of examples below, with more on the AI-Generated Resources page.

  • The Art and Essence of StorytellingInfographic View →
  • The Power of Digital Storytelling: A Guide for 21st Century EducatorsInfographic View →
  • Memory to MovieAI-generated slide deck Read →