Digital Storytelling in Your Classroom

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Collaborative Digital Storytelling by Langwitches, License: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Collaborative Digital Storytelling by Langwitches, License: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling is the creation of stories using electronic devices. These stories generally include multimedia such as narration, sound, video and images. Please respect copyright and fair use rules when selecting multimedia to incorporate into digital stories. Use Google custom search or sites like http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/, creative commons, and free sound to find multimedia that you are permitted to use, and remember to give credit to the creators of the content that you use.

Why digital storytelling

Digital storytelling provides students with opportunities to create understanding by analyzing and synthesizing content for use in the creation of a story with a particular perspective. These stories can be shared broadly and can be used to contribute to our communities.

Elements of Digital Storytelling

Traditionally, digital stories have 7 elements. These elements have been reframed for the educational context to create 10 elements.

  1. The Overall Purpose of the Story
  2. The Narrator’s Point of View
  3. A Dramatic Question or Questions
  4. The Choice of Content
  5. Clarity of Voice
  6. Pacing of the Narrative
  7. Use of a Meaningful Audio Soundtrack
  8. Quality of the Images, Video & other Multimedia Elements
  9. Economy of the Story Detail
  10. Good Grammar and Language Usage

 

Uses of Digital Storytelling

  • Biographical narrative from a first person or third person perspective
  • Present a historical event
  • Create a book review
  • Create a documentary
  • Construct a story around an image or set of images (e.g. creative writing)
  • Explore vocabulary using images and context
  • Explain a concept using images and sound

Activity 1: Create a Video

  1. Use a movie making app such as iMovie to create a video. Interview colleagues at your table about how they might use an iPad as an educator. Then edit your video. Finally, upload it to YouTube.
  2. At your table, discuss what content and pedagogical approaches would lend themselves to using video in your classroom.
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Possible apps: iMovie, Puppetpals, Sonicpics, Sock Puppets, Splice, Animoto, SloPro, Vimeo, Toontastic, Fotobabble

Activity 2: Create an eBook

  1. Using the content that you gathered from your interviews in Activity 1, as well as your own reflection, create an eBook that highlights ways that the iPad can be used at your grade level. Include some multimedia content, e.g. for demonstration.
  2. Publish your book and be ready to share with others in the session.
  3. Reflect on how you can use eBooks for teaching or how you can facilitate student use of it. Does it fit with your content and pedagogical approach?

Possible apps: I Tell a Story, Kid in Story Book Creator, Zooburst, Book Creator, Storykit, Scribble My Story, Comic Life, StoryRobe, Little Bird Tales, Strip Designer

Digital Storytelling in the Curriculum

Digital storytelling can take the format of video, ebook, podcast, etc. Think about the unit that you most recently taught or was teaching. How could you have used digital storytelling as part of your learning engagements or your assessments? Please share your ideas on our padlet.

Bonus 1: Find a podcast of interest to you in the Podcast app, subscribe to it and customize the settings to fit your needs.

Bonus 2: Visit Apptivities.org and browse for something relevant to you or your students.

 

Links to explore

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Multimedia Resources

 

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