Digital Storytelling

With multimedia infiltrating the classroom, storytelling has officially gone digital. Let your students' voices be heard.

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Ask students if they’d rather go to the library and write a research paper or learn about a topic by putting together photos and music and recording their own voices to tell a digital story—and you can guess how they’ll respond.

Kids are drawn to technology. They also love a good story. Combining the two can be a powerful educational tool.

If this is the language of today’s students, teachers need to speak it, says Jason Ohler, author of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom (Corwin Press, 2008) and professor of education technology at the University of Alaska. “The major shift in literacy has gone from paper to the media collage,” he says. “One of the biggest disconnects is that we test for words on a piece of paper, but we hope and pray that when they leave school they will have the media skills they need to enter tomorrow’s workplace.”

What is Digital Storytelling?
A digital story mixes still images (photos or artwork), voice narration, and music to tell a personal narrative, recount a historical event, or instruct. It’s different from a PowerPoint presentation in that it more closely resembles a short film with a continuous narrative line. And classes across the curriculum, from English to science, can take part.

The tools to make a digital story—cameras, scanners, and software—have become very affordable, says Bernard Robin, associate professor of instructional technology in the College of Education at the University of Houston. “Ten years ago, if you wanted to do something like this, you needed more training and it was expensive,” he says.

Now, teachers can download free software programs, such as Apple’s iMovie and Photo Story for Windows, and students can learn the basics in just an hour. It’s motivating to see the results. “They think: I can be Ken Burns,” says Robin.
Storytelling is a natural fit for kids immersed in movies, television, and video games. When children complain schoolwork is boring, says Ohler, “what they are saying is: Where is the story?”

When words, images, and sound are artfully combined, a new kind of communication emerges, says Bernajean Porter, an educational consultant in Denver, Colorado, who leads storytelling camps. Yet, the story is core. “After all, a story should be remembered for soul, not the bells and whistles,” she says.

Push Kids’ Creativity
At Lopez High School in Brownsville, Texas, digital storytelling helped transform the attitude of teachers toward technology and of students toward themselves. It has been effective with students in special education and ESL classes and with recent immigrants, says Janice Butler, an assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Brownville.

The tools were easy for teachers to learn. “Even for teachers who aren’t necessarily digital natives, this is something they can show easily—there is a level of confidence,” says Butler.

You don’t have to be a technical whiz to teach digital storytelling. If you have an open mind and classroom management skills, and are willing to use students as resources, it can work, says Ohler.

Brenda Britt, an English teacher at Greenville Technical Charter High School in Greenville, South Carolina, says the technology was rough at first, but she was easily converted. “My theory is that the kids know more than I do about the technology, so teach me,” she says. “In the story-writing process, that’s where I can help out.” Britt says if she is able to embrace this new approach at age 62, younger teachers should as well.

In Jamie Adams’s eighth-grade history class at Presbyterian School in Houston, Texas, students pick an idea or event as the focus of a digital story. The kids write a script, find images, select music, and compile a three-minute package. “Once you start putting images to what you are talking about, it makes you think faster and stronger,” he says.

Kids gain 21st-century skills making digital stories—from inventive thinking to digital-age literacy. The process engages both the right and left sides of the brain, as it requires linear thinking and design. Most valuable is the creativity that it inspires, says Porter. “It’s hard to teach creativity. You have to have experiences,” she says.

What Makes Good Digital Storytelling
The images, music, and narration can deepen the meaning of a digital story, but experts maintain that the writing is critical. “There is not enough technology in the world to decorate something that is superficial,” says Porter. “You can tell if a project is led by images, not the story.”

Students should refine their script before going to the computer to work on visuals. Since students work at different paces, it’s not necessary to have one computer per student—they can take turns.

To Porter, it’s the personal aspect that is key to a compelling story. “With a personal, emotional narrative, you are living in the story; you can feel what is going on for the person,” she says.

Stefani Sese, East Coast regional director of the Center for Digital Storytelling, challenges students to think about point of view. “What is the story that only you can tell?” she asks her workshop attendees in Washington, D.C. “It’s about putting yourself in a story.... It’s personal.”

Librarian Sully Carter, who attended Sese’s workshop, hopes digital storytelling will inspire students at his elementary school in Orange, Virginia. “What better way to tell stories about their families?” asks Carter, who plans to start a pilot program after school for fourth and fifth graders. “They are going to like seeing themselves on the screen.”

Sese maintains that digital storytelling is a group process, and the story circle, where students give one another feedback, helps fine-tune scripts. Ohler calls it “peer pitching”—just like in Hollywood—during which students have two minutes to sell a story, followed by a critique about places that need work.

Experts suggest teachers give guidelines for giving feedback so students feel encouraged. Supportive language such as “Have you thought about…?” or “If it were my story, I would want to hear more about…” often work.

In her English class in Greenville, South Carolina, Britt works hard to build trust among her students. She often asks students to create a digital story in response to a certain poem or novel and relate it to their lives.

Good digital stories need a dramatic question and emotional content. The best stories “make me lean forward in the chair and have some sort of transformation,” says Ohler. And with any luck, by going through the process of distilling ideas into key words and images, students will be transformed as well.

Today's Media and Knowledge Specialists
Today's Media and Knowledge Specialists

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