Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling: What's It All About?

"Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. Digital stories derive their power by weaving images, music, narrative and voice together, thereby giving deep dimension and vivid color to characters, situations, experiences, and insights"

~ Leslie Rule, Digital Storytelling Association

Through digital stories, valuable experiences and lessons are passed on to readers:

   What happened to a person
   Why it was significant at the time
   How it affected the person's life and the lives of those around them

Stories can share perspective and educate and help build understanding, tolerance, and compassion in students by being informative, questioning, historical, and autobiographical.

It is important that the technology tools used to convey the story don't become more important than the story being communicated. Elemental to a digital narrative is a good story. "If you don’t have a good story to tell, then the technology just makes that more obvious” (Jason Ohler).

"When a digital story is finished it should be remembered for its soul, not the bells and whistles of the technology tools" (Bernajean Porter, 2004).

Digital Historical Narratives

"Storytelling is uniquely a human experience that enables us to convey, through the language of words, aspects of ourselves and others, and the worlds, real or imagined, that we inhabit. Stories enable us to come to know these worlds and our place in them given that we are all, to some degree, constituted by stories: Stories about ourselves, our families, friends and colleagues, our communities, our cultures, our place in history" (McDrury and Alterio, 2003),

Digital stories provide a format to tell personal anecdotes. Digital historical narratives capture an event or experience from the past and bring it to life. Using electronic primary sources, a 2-3 minute “movie” or slideshow is created that includes audio, video, photographs, and text. A digital narrative presents the perspective of a person from history or an event as seen through the individuals that lived through that event. Through the research process, students will describe and interpret a historic event by analyzing primary documents and then using this reading, create a visual presentation that synthesizes their new understanding into a short story or a new body of knowledge. As students access historical documents and pictures, they in effect, become historians themselves, by adding a maybe new and previously unexamined perspective to a historical event. This brand of inquiry will transform the social studies classroom from a teacher-centered transmission model to a model that encourages students to inquire and lead.

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Seven Elements of a Digital Story

a point of view

a dramatic question

emotional content

economy

pacing

the gift of your voice

an accompanying soundtrack

From: The Center for Digital Storytelling

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Resources