What is Digital Storytelling?
Digital storytelling is all about combining the digital world with the age old tradition of telling stories. It allows stories to be told using digital tools. This means that stories can now be told using digital media such as podcasts, videos , or other online websites. It is a great way to engage students in their work while also incorporating technology. It gives students a voice in their learning. They can create stories about the content they are learning or tell their own narrative. It provides students with a creative way to portray their own learning.
There are many great digital storytelling tools or apps. Some tools such as BookCreator, StoryJumper, and Pixton, allow students to create story books online and many of which also allow them to voiceover their own stories as well. Other tools such as Anchor, can be used to create podcasts.
These tools can be accessed at the following links, if you are interested and would like to learn more:
Storyjumper: https://www.storyjumper.com/
BookCreator: https://bookcreator.com/
Pixton: https://www.pixton.com/
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/
There is lots of potential with these tools and I think they could be used in many different ways. Below is just one example of how these types of tools may be utilized.
This is an image of a page out of a storybook that I created called "Math ABC, 123" which was made to be an alphabet book on mathematics. It was created using Storyjumper.
How Might I Use Digital Storytelling?
Though I have yet to use many of these tools in an actual classroom setting, I do have an idea that I would one day love to put into use. My idea on how I could use these tools is having students create stories to be used as classroom artifacts in my own class library. I think it would be very neat to have each student in my class to make a story on whatever topic we are currently learning about. They would make the story with a tool such as StoryJumper, where they would be able to create and then later buy or print their story. I would print or buy the stories once each student has completed their own and use them to fill my own classroom library. This would provide the students with their own resources on the topic we are learning about. I could do a project like this every year and get each new class to contribute to the class library. I think this would be very neat to have stories that the children themselves made. It would be especially neat for students to also read stories that previous classes had made.
I think back to when I was a student, this would have been very neat if my teachers would have done something alike to this. I could have made a story that could be kept in the classroom, and three years later when my sister rolled through that same classroom, she could read the stories that I and the classes between created. In this way, my book can serve as both an artifact and a resource for the classroom. I think many students would find it very cool to be able to read the books that the "older kids" made, especially because often students look up to the kids who are a year or two older than them.
This idea came to me after we explored digital storytelling in my ICT class. I thought about when I was a child and older kids used to make Christmas stories for the younger students and we could take the stories home. The stories were often based off the child's own families and had hand drawn pictures within. I remember being so excited to get my story and I think I likely still have a few of them to this day. This memory made me think of how I could do something similar with digital storytelling, and this idea just feel into my lap.
I know this is just an idea, and that many logistics are likely to still need working out, I think this would be extremely fun to do with an elementary or middle years class one day. I would love to see how this would work out and how much excitement students would get from reading other students stories. I would love to get to talk to other educators who have used digital storytelling in their own classroom in a similar or very different way. Digital storytelling intrigues me and I cannot wait to explore this idea some more.
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