All+About++Storytelling!

**What IS Digital Storytelling?**

Digital storytelling has many forms and as many definitions. One of the more accomplished digital storytellers of our day, [|Daniel Meadows] defines digital stories as “short, personal multimedia tales told from the heart.”



The beauty of this digital expression, he maintains, is that stories can be: --created by people everywhere --on any subject --shared electronically all over the world.

Meadows describes digital stories as “multimedia sonnets from the people” in which “photographs discover the talkies, and the stories told assemble 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.”

Digital storytelling is the practice of combining --narrative with digital content --including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, --typically with a strong emotional component.

Sophisticated digital stories can be interactive movies that include highly produced audio and visual effects, but a set of slides with corresponding narration or music constitutes a basic digital story. Digital stories can be instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective. The resources available to incorporate into a digital story are virtually limitless, giving the storyteller enormous creative latitude. Some learning theorists believe that as a pedagogical technique, storytelling can be effectively applied to nearly any subject. Constructing a narrative and communicating it effectively require the storyteller to think carefully about the topic and consider the audience’s perspective.

**Why is it important?**  People tell stories to teach beliefs and values to others. The oral tradition of knowledge transfer and exchange has served as the basis for education since humans began teaching one another, and digital stories build on this model by incorporating rich, dynamic media. The process of creating a digital story forces storytellers to choose a topic that can be appropriately conveyed to a particular audience, with electronic elements, in a time available. This dynamic creates an opportunity to reflect on life and find deep conventions with the subject matter of a course or with an out-of-class experience, such as a trip abroad. Digital stories let students (and teachers) express themselves not only with their own words but also in their own voices, fostering a sense of individuality and of "owning" their creations. At the same time, digital stories give students (and teachers) an opportunity to experiment with self-representation--telling a story that highlights specific characteristics or events--a key part of establishing their identity.

Recent data suggest that a majority of U.S. students use various tools to create digital media, and this proportion is growing. Today’s students don’t think twice about generating original electronic content and sharing it online, and digital storytelling dovetails well with these modes of student expression. Students creating digital stories develop proficiency with multimedia applications, but the deeper impact comes from their thinking critically about effective combinations among audio and visual elements.

Each story challenges a student to cull—from personal collections or from other resources—artifacts that meaningfully support the story and to assemble them in a way that achieves the desired effect. In doing so, students develop a discerning eye for online resources, increasing their technology and media literacy.

http://www.online-stopwatch.com/