Digital+Storytelling

Digital Storytelling is a fantastic way to engage students, teachers and just about anyone else. Make no mistake, it is not just ‘fun’ for anyone who has ever wanted to be the next Ken Burns or Steven Spielberg. There are many different definitions of "digital storytelling," but in general, all of them revolve around the idea of combining the longstanding art of telling stories with any of a variety of available multimedia tools, including graphics, audio, video animation, and Web publishing. Or maybe Math, instead of boring ‘Research a mathematician’ exit projects, have students create a digital story of how you can find the slope of a line, or use the quadratic equation. The students would have to break down the process and create a short film. Since these might contain video of students, they won’t go on the Net, but they could be stored on computers in the library for future students to access. Peer tutoring 2.0! Poetry Month? Have students record themselves reading a poem, either theirs or someone else’s. Add music and pictures and create digital interpretations of the poem to share. The possibilities are endless, but you get the picture.I have gathered some resources for you and posted them here. As always,if you would like me to come in and work with your classes, you have only to ask!
 * Daniel Meadows ** defines digital stories as "short, personal multimedia tales told from the heart." The beauty of this form of digital expression, he maintains is that these stories can be created by people everywhere, on any subject, and shared electronically all over the world. Meadows goes on to describe digital stories as "multimedia sonnets from the people" in which "photographs discover the talkies, and the stories told assemble in the ether as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a gaggle of invisible histories which, when viewed together, tell the bigger story of our time, the story that defines who we are."
 * Imagine the possibilities ** for digital storytelling in our school. We have seen digi docs created in the Social Studies classes, and a few in Language Arts, but there are so many more opportunities that we are overlooking. How about Science? Students working collaboratively while conducting an experiment could use photos, either taken in the classroom of actual subjects or gathered from Google images, add in a narration or description of their findings, and publish it on the web. Sounds like a digital lab report to me. Talk about motivation.