Digital Storytelling

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Mehring on April 11, 2011 at 7:04pm

Hello Ana-Alicia,

I have used digital storytelling in the past and continue to use it in different forms today. You can get a copy of an article I wrote on how I used digital storytelling in a university class, just click Digital Storytelling. In this class I wanted students to tell me what they remember about their 1st year in university. It was a 8 week project, using video cameras and iMovie, which enabled the students to reflect on their experiences in university. This was a group assignment.

 

I do use a form of digital storytelling on a regular basis when having students reflect. It is also a great way for students to see their progress (I teach English as a Foreign Language in Japan). Every few weeks I will ask students to use Photobooth (a Mac Application) and report on questions raised in class by classmates or the teacher. Students then post this video on my LMS, sometimes for classmates to comment on, sometimes only between teacher and student. Then, over the course of a semester, I have them look back at the videos and reflect on their progress and their responses. It makes a really nice addition to their learning portfolios.

 

I think digital storytelling is great for student produced materials and try to use it whenever it fits the curriculum, for example, extensive reading reports, communicative English reflections, American studies presentations, etc.

Best of luck!

Jeff

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Permalink Reply by Matt McGoldrick on April 12, 2011 at 11:02am

I did a digital storytelling project last year.  My students wrote about a personal experience and then used that as a spring board for their digitized version that they were to create using Photostory. 

Lessons learned and considerations include...

• Have students story board before getting on computers.  They need to have a clear vision for their story or else a lot of time is wasted especially if it is hard to get computer lab time.
• Will students create their own illustrations or will they just import photos? My students wanted to create their own illustrations; we used Pixie for this; this added an extra layer of work because students needed to know how to use Pixie as well as how to turn their Pixie files in to viable image files which had to be imported in to Photostory.  Did I mention this was a lot of work?
• Have several headsets with mics available; the built-in mics on many computer monitors pick up a lot of background noise so I would stray from those if at all possible.
• Allot twice as much time as you think it will require the students to complete the project!

If you want to see how some of them turned out, here are links to a couple:

http://nicholassportfolio.weebly.com/uploads/3/1/1/1/3111680/harry_...

http://isabellesportfolio.weebly.com/uploads/3/1/1/1/3111719/plane_...

http://austinsportfolio.weebly.com/uploads/3/1/1/1/3111689/photosto...

 

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Crawford on April 18, 2011 at 3:49pm

Hi Ana-Alicia,

 

I’d love to see how some of our fellow teachers are using Digital Storytelling in their classrooms. Please share!

In the meantime, I have some resources that might help you:

• Microsoft Teacher Guide on Digital Storytelling: http://bit.ly/fzUsKC
• Here's a blog series that one of my colleagues wrote – “100 Digital Storytelling Tools for Your Digital Selves + Natives”: http://bit.ly/huPr98

Hope you find them helpful!

 

Best,

Liz Hansen

Twitter: @HP_Edu

LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/HPTechEd

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