Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling

Introduction to Storytelling

Digital Storytelling is a fantastic way to engage students, teachers and just about anyone else who has ever wanted to be the next Ken Burns or Steven Spielberg. There are many different definitions of "digital storytelling," but in general, all of them revolve around the idea of combining the longstanding art of telling stories with any of a variety of available multimedia tools, including graphics, audio, video animation, and Web publishing.

Daniel Meadows defines digital stories as "short, personal multimedia tales told from the heart." The beauty of this form of digital expression, he maintains is that these stories can be created by people everywhere, on any subject, and shared electronically all over the world. Meadows goes on to describe digital stories as "multimedia sonnets from the people" in which "photographs discover the talkies, and the stories told assemble in the ether as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a gaggle of invisible histories which, when viewed together, tell the bigger story of our time, the story that defines who we are."

Illustration for the digital story, The Look

A great way to begin learning about Digital Storytelling is by watching a digital story. One of our favorites is The Look, a personal narrative about how an educator teaches science fiction. The story is told in a humorous and interesting manner filled with little known historical information on the subject and uses still images and video from famous science fiction stories and films integrated with historical resources.

This digital story, created by Craig Jacobson, contains many of the elements that can be included in a Digital Story. A detailed examination of these elements may be found at the Center for Digital Storytelling where the following Seven Elements for digital stories are described:

Point of View
A Dramatic Question
Emotional Content
The Gift of your Voice
The Power of the Soundtrack
Economy
Pacing

	View a PowerPoint slideshow that describes the Educational uses of Digital Storytelling.

You may download this and other PowerPoint slide presentations that deal with Digital Storytelling and freely use and/or modify the materials for non-profit educational use.
An Introduction to Digital Storytelling Intro-to-Digital-Storytelling.ppt
A Multilevel Approach to Using Digital Storytelling in the Classroom
A-multilevel-approach-to-DS.ppt
The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling - revised Educational-uses-of-DS.ppt

For more information, please contact:
Bernard R. Robin, Ph. D.
Instructional Technology Program
College of Education
University of Houston