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Get Started with Digital Storytelling: Implement this exciting process in your classroom(article)

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Get Started with Digital Storytelling: Implement this exciting process in your classroom(article)

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Implement this exciting process in your classroom

While the art of storytelling has been around for thousands of years, the advent of personal computers and approachable communication technologies has allowed storytellers to "go digital." In 1994, Dana Atchley and Joe Lambert at the Center for Digital Storytelling began teaching others to craft digital stories, and the digital storytelling movement was born.

The digital stories created at the Center for Digital Storytelling focused on first-person narratives that used images, narration and music to frame memories as powerful stories. The ability to personalize stories with pictures and narration gives the story special meaning for both the creator and the viewer.

Digital Storytelling Works for Students

Because the process of digital storytelling asks for the author's perspective and validates it as important, digital storytelling is an effective way to engage students in their learning. Using the digital medium for storytelling gives students an opportunity to create using the tools that are relevant and meaningful in their lives.

The ability to tell their story in a variety of ways - combining sounds, music, graphics, photographs, and original artwork - allows them to show their perspective and understanding, and express their creativity in a manner that engages their auditory, visual and kinesthetic skills.

Much of the power of Digital Storytelling comes from the collaboration and teamwork process. In a collaborative environment, students are actively engaged in the exchange of ideas and are responsible for reaching their own academic goals as well as helping others in their group to succeed. During the process of developing a digital story, students also build planning, organizational, and time management skills.

Using Digital Storytelling in the Classroom

Digital storytelling can be used in the classroom in a countless ways. Telling personal stories helps students learn important literacy skills such as voice in a narrative form and first-person perspective. Since modern communication involves "writing" with pictures and music, having students create digital stories helps them build media creation skills.

Digital storytelling can also be used to address curriculum areas beyond language arts and media literacy. For example, students can retell an event from the life of a famous person to help themselves and their audience better understand why this person acted the way they did. Students can take the voice of a drop of water and show its progression through the water cycle or path through a watershed. Younger students can become an animal and discuss habitat, food, predation, and other life cycle issues. Public service announcements can be used as both a persuasive writing exercise and a way to address science topics like health and conservation.

What Does Digital Storytelling Look Like in the Classroom?

The process of creating a digital story in the classroom follows steps similar to creating any large-scale technology project.

Create Foundations

Digital storytelling is a way for students to think critically and apply knowledge about a curriculum topic, not learn it for the first time. The first step is to help them gain the foundational knowledge necessary to tell a compelling story.

Set Expectations

Students need to see and hear what a great story looks like. Share examples created by students, as well as professional storytellers like Ken Burns. Make sure that students understand your expectations and the criteria for successful performance.

Form Teams

Building a well-crafted digital story takes time. To conserve valuable classroom time and build important collaborative skills, have students work in teams to design, plan, and develop their stories. Assign roles to students based on their strengths and interests, and work with the teams to ensure a uniform narrative voice.

Brainstorm Ideas

The process of creating a digital story moves from bigger to smaller, wider to narrower. Brainstorming helps to open up the project to ALL the possibilities. Begin the process by brainstorming as many ideas about the content as possible. Then brainstorm ways to best share that content and refine the project's scope.

Develop the Vision

Brainstorming generates many ideas, but every good story needs a focus. Determine what the audience should know and feel as a result of watching the story. Then, decide the best way to tell the story to achieve this goal.

Write the Narrative

Digital storytelling is about telling a personal story or sharing a personal perspective on an event or process. The narrative should makes the voice of the storyteller clear. Each word should be carefully chosen to evoke an image in the mind of the viewer.

Create a Storyboard

The storyboard is the map that demonstrates how the vision will be achieved. The storyboard should demonstrate how every image, media element, and effect will support the narrative. Developing a storyboard helps ensure that the narrative is focused, organized, and concise, and will prompt additional edits in the text component of the story.

Gather Resources and Process Media

Collect your photographs and scan them, search the Internet for images to support your ideas, use a paint or imaging program to create original art. If you are using Frames, you can create your own illustrations using the drawing tools. Write, record, or locate sound effects and music that help set the emotional tone of the story.

Build the Story

Often the key to a compelling story is not the content, but the way in which the story is told. Flashy features and transition effects should support the content of the story, not overwhelm it. Combine the media resources, record the narrative, and adjust the timing and effects to create a powerful digital story. Save the story in a format you can use online or incorporate into a presentation.

Share the Story

Your story needs to be told! Share it with small groups or to a larger audience in an auditorium. Televise your story on on closed-circuit television or on your cable provider's local access station. Publish it to the web and visit news groups and blogs to encourage others to view it.

Conclusion

Digital storytelling pushes students beyond creating slide shows or presentations about a topic, requiring them to incorporate their opinions and perspectives. The powerful combination of student voice and technology-rich product motivates students to perform high-level work and engages them in a process that helps make learning in the classroom relevant and exciting.

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While the art of storytelling has been around for thousands of years, the advent of personal computers and approachable communication technologies has allowed storytellers to "go digital." In 1994, Dana Atchley and Joe Lambert at the Center for Digital Storytelling began teaching others to craft digital stories, and the digital storytelling movement was born.

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Using Digital Stories to Improve Student Literacy

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Duration: 2:19

Irongate School teacher Natasha Jacobs and students from her Year 5/6 class share their learning journey. To develop their understanding of story structure students retell Māori myths. Students explain how they create a storywheel that is then digitised and supported with audio narration. Natasha reflects on the opportunities provided for student learning while students share how using technology has made a difference to their learning.

Transcript

We were learning, our unit topic was Māori myths and legends and we decided to do a storywheel about a legend that we wanted to do.

We were learning how to read better, read a story and understand what we were reading about.

We had to write on a piece of paper eight different sequences in our short, in our own sentences about the story.

To start with we just were producing the story wheels, which was a Sheena Cameron idea that we got from her reading professional development. They had like a storyboard, sort of an idea and they planned out their eight segments of writing.

We took a photo of it and imported it onto the computer.

Because initially it was just a literacy focus so we kind of extended it when we saw that there was a need for it and then they used the EasiSpeaks to record the retelling that they'd done of each of the eight pictures.

It's made me better at writing 'cos I know how to retell stories now.

We listened to the computer to see if our, to see if we spoke clearly on the microphones.

Then they had to listen to what they'd recorded, decide whether that was going to be good enough for an audience or not and re-record it. So we kind of moved into oral language as well which wasn't initially a focus but it had to become one. They hyperlinked onto Word to add their sound recordings. In my sharing with Marion about what we were doing she said, oh you know that would be really awesome if you could make that and we could use it in our reading programme. So then I took that idea back to the class and we talked about, you know striving for accuracy for an even bigger audience than just ourselves so it gave us a more authentic audience as well. You know working on the computers is fun and they love that and it engages them but it's higher than that. It's not just about the computer it's about the audience.

Tags: English, Primary, Student inquiry, Self-regulated learning, Collaborative tools, Writing, Digital stories

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Using digital stories to improve student literacy

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Duration: 2:19 Irongate School teacher Natasha Jacobs and students from her Year 5/6 class share their learning journey. To develop their understanding of story structure students retell Māori myths. Students explain how they create a storywheel that is then digitised and supported with audio narration.