Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling

Digital stories can be informative, questioning, historical, autobiographical, or anywhere in between. Below are links to digital stories on many different topics. Some were created by Texas teachers, while many others were created by undergraduate & graduate students and faculty members from the University of Houston.

Digital Stories as Personal Narratives

Stories that Inform or Instruct

Many of the digital stories on this website are in the Windows Media Video format and may be downloaded for non-profit, educational use. Instructions for downloading the stories may be found at:

http://www.coe.uh.edu/digital-storytelling/saving/saving.html

Important Note: Many of the stories on this page have been created with Microsoft Photo Story 3 and these files require a specific codec - a software technology for compressing and decompressing data - to play properly. The specific codec is: Windows Media Video 9 Image v2 and it is included with Windows Media Player version 10 for Windows XP.

So if your computer is using any version of the Windows XP operating system and Windows Media Player 10 is installed, the stories should play without a problem. However, it should be noted that we have seen problems with older PCs and recommend that PCs used to view these digital stories have an Intel P4 1.7-gigahertz (GHz) or equivalent processor and at least 512 megabytes (MB) of RAM, a monitor that supports a minimum resolution of 800x600 pixels, and DirectX 9 or later graphics support. If you are using Windows XP and an earlier version of Windows Media Player, you may download and install Windows Media Player 10, which is available for free from:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/download/download.aspx

You may also download the codec itself for use with Windows Media Player 9, which should work with other versions of the Windows operating system (such as Windows 2000 or Windows ME). The codec is available from:
http://www.wmplugins.com/ItemDetail.aspx?codec=WVP2 You may also download a free copy of Windows Media Player 9 from:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/player.aspx

Note to Macintosh Users: We are currently working on ways to make these stories viewable on Apple computers using the Macintosh operating system, but at this time, many of the stories on this site are only viewable on a PC running the Windows XP operating system.

Copyright Statement: Many of the digital stories on this site include images and audio found on the Internet using commonly available search engines. The stories have been created for non-profit, educational use by students and teachers and we hope are within the fair use protection of existing copyright laws. If any copyright owner objects to the use of any work appearing on this site, please contact us and we will remove the work and review the propriety of including it.

Example Digital Stories