5.3 Digital Story Telling

Digital story telling is broadly introduced as a way for students and teachers to share their knowledge.  A more practical explanation might be simply creating and distributing a story using digital tools. 

Linear digital stories are the simplest design where the story is presented in a number of ordered chapters.  However, digital stories are presented in a non-linear fashion and as a collage of media types and presentation types with a backbone of mostly text supported by other media objects.  In the non-linear example, the reader or user of the digital story does not need to explore each of the areas, they should be able to use the backbone to understand the linear narrative and then to embellish their version of the digital story through choosing any and as many or few of the objects as they wish. 

A major challenge with digital story telling is getting the platform to allow the user to read the narrative and to engage with the multimedia at the same time without the viewing of the multimedia feeling like a detour (as occurs with the traditional non-linear story telling style).

Digital story telling occurs across all the genres of traditional storytelling.  Digital story telling is used extensively in the media.  Media digital stories are often about natural disaster such as the bush fire’s in Tasmania or a avalanche that took the lives of 15 skiers in Washington State.  Many communities use story telling to bring their story to a larger audience.

Some of the most successful advertisements tell ‘stories’ and are examples of digital story telling.

Digital Storytelling includes an understanding of the elements of a story, character development and the process of story boarding.

If found this blog on how to use Scratch programming language for digital story telling.  One of the examples is a student project which tells the story of carbon from the periodic table.  

Digitial Storytelling media still need to follow the same copyright rules as before.  I liked the approach of the blog with the Scratch programming language stories where the code has been 'remixed' before it has been posted.  Depending on where the story is shared from dictates that level of security and privacy that is needed.  If the students create most of what they use themselves or they use creative commons licensed material such as the objects from the Scratch platform, then this practice will keep most of the security and privacy issues under control.

I also liked this blog about how digitalstorytelling builds 21st Century skills because it removes some of the stigma about digital storytelling and it inspired me to think more deeply about integrating digital storytelling into my own teaching practice. 

SAMR for using Digital Story Telling learner-accessed vs learner generated

Context	Substitution	Augmentation	Modification	Redefinition
Learner-accessed	Using digital stories as a teaching tool by playing the digital story and then answering some questions about the digital story.	Place the digital story on the class wiki along with the questions about the story.  Ask the students to post their answers to the questions in text via a wiki.	Place the digital story on the class wiki and ask the students to work in groups to pose questions via a group wiki and then to present the final answers from the group wiki to the class.	Place the digital story on the class wiki and use collaboration software to view the activities and pose answers to these activities via the group wiki across two schools.  Report final answers from the group wiki to the class.
Learner- generated	Ask students to storyboard and then create a short digital story using Scratch about different types of work and how they will be affected by future trends.  Share the digital story infront of class.	Ask students to create a short digital story using Scratch and post the completed Scratch program on the class wiki allowing comments to be posted by peers.	Ask students to create a short digital story using Scratch to solve a problem in groups.	Ask students to create a short digital story using Scratch to solve a problem in groups and to swap and use a post-it note application to comment on and suggest improvements to their program.  Finally returning to their own story and making changes.

(SAMR template table adapted from Technology Is Learning)