Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling combines the ancient and cultural art of storytelling with today's technology by allowing creators to carefully combine images with sounds.  Students will consider their selected audience and tweak their medium to ensure their message is received, thereby engaging their audience.   The average digital story's length is between 3 and 5 minutes long causing the author to carefully consider the concise presentation style of each image and sound in order to keep the audience's attention. (Courtney 133). 

Photoshop Elements is an easy and effective program to create digital stories.  The link below takes you to a short tutorial prepared by Jan Kabili and is available at Learn Ontario, Video how-to tutorials on a variety of programs available to educators at http://www.learnontario.ca/search.

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-photoshop-elements-8/getting-started-01-what-is-photoshop-elements/

 Digital storytelling encourages creative thinking among students as they consider the "why" and "how" of a creation.  Writing can be creative fiction or researched non-fiction.  Images can be from the internet of they can be personal photos or art.  Sound can be copied from somewhere else or students may use their own music.  Students are able to use their personal strengths in order to create a digitized story that is different from their peers

How  Can I Use Digital Storytelling to Engage Students in Critical Thinking?

Here are examples of assignments which utilize digital story telling to increase critical thinking.

Grade 9 Academic English Digital Storytelling Assignment

Goal:     Students will research a topic and create a "TOP 10" or "Worst 10" list.  The topic of their list may be anything appropriate for school.  Ideas include "Top 10 Sports Moments of the Last 10 Years"; "Top 10 Children's Movies"; "Top 10 Scientific Discoveries of the Last Century"; "Top 10 Canadian Destinations for Teens" or "Top 10 Reasons to Stay in School".   Alternatively, students could choose to make a "Worst 10" list such as "Worst 10 Genocide Incidents" or "Worst 10 Tropical Storms of the Last 10 Years".

Final Product:     A digital story, 3 - 5 minutes in length, which combines images and sound.  The audience for this assignment is the student's peers.  Students are to hand in all of their process work for this project and students are to also prepare a MLA style Works Cited page to give the teacher upon presentation of their digital story.

Process:

Throughout this assignment, encourage students to follow the 4 Research Stages:  Preparing for Research, Accessing Resources, Processing Resources and Transferring Learning.

1. Give students assignment and accompanying preparation handouts.  Bonus marks for the teacher if these resources are available on a moodle or wiki!!
2. Have students brainstorm potential topics for their list.
3. Have students choose a topic and prepare a KWL chart or another graphic organizer that defines what they already know and what they need to learn  for that topic.
4. Give students class time to research their topic.  Encourage students to take point form research notes and to record source information.
5. Have students create a story board to be approved by the teacher before student begins work on their digital story

6. After storyboard approval, students should watch the Photoshop Elements tutorial and start to prepare their digital story, including images and sound.

7. Students should prepare their Works Cited page in MLA format.

8. Digital Storytelling Showcase...all students are to share their stories with their class.

Digital Storytelling Ideas for Other Subject Areas

Need ideas for specific subject areas?  Check out the ideas below.  They can easily be modified for different grades. 

Grade 10 Physical Education

Goal:  In groups of 2 or 3, students are to invent a new game for a targeted audience.  Groups will decide if players will play in teams or individually.  Rules will need to be set for their new game.  Students will then create a digital story that teaches their audience to play their game.   Their digital story should include slides aabout equipment and rules.

Technology

Goal:  In groups of 2 or 3, students are to create a digital story which outlines how to stay safe in a kitchen lab, science lab or technical shop. 

Art

Goal:  Students will use digital story telling to create an artist's statement for a favourite artistic creation.

Grade 10 Music

Goal:  Students will create a digital story which will convince an elementary student to choose a particular musical instrument to learn. Students will research the history of their selected instrument and include historical, construction, famous player and other related instrument information.  The digital story should be created with a grade 6 audience in mind.

Grade 11 Geography

Goal:  Students will create a digital story that summarizes an imaginary vacation to a key geographic location.  Their digital story must be research based and the information presented accurate.