Digital Storytelling: A New Way to Tell Your Story

    Digital storytelling refers to a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to share aspects of their life story with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie. Simple techniques such as a set of slides with corresponding narration or music can constitute a basic digital story. And the content of stories can be instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective.

  According to 7 Things You Should KnowAbout Digital Storytelling, there are several advantages of digital storytelling applying in the classroom:

◎Storytelling can be effectively applied to nearly any subject.
◎User who has no technical background should be able to create digital stories.
◎Offers an opportunity to create a story reflecting on life and out-of-class experience.
◎Highlights specific characteristics or events of the storytellers.
◎Develops language proficiency with multimedia applications.
◎Develops a discerning eye for online resources, increasing their technology and media literacy.

 

(the video Frankenstein is an example of storytelling from The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling)

    As far as I concerned, I would like to use digital storytelling as a weekly journal. Students are able to tell whatever happened to them in the weekdays. The content is flexible. It could be something excited, or frightened, something they like or hate, and something they would like to appreciate or complain about. But the only rule is that the story must be told in past tense because I also want to use this tool to monitor their grammar.  

    To sum up, the essences of story-telling is to share words and information with others. And now with the help of technology, the story-telling become more vivid and interesting. Through the process of creating and watching digital stories, students are able to increase the information literacy, and also demonstrate the stu­dent’s learning and growth.