E. Digital Story

Digital Story Reflection

50 Ways to Tell a Digital Story, http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools
by Allan Levine illustrates more than 50 web 2.0 tools where people can practice the ancient art of storytelling using the tools of the day. I have worked with both teachers and students, JK-12 using programs such as Microsoft Photostory 3, Moviemaker and Mac’s iMovie. These have been some of the most successful professional development sessions I have offered. With “creation” being at the top of higher order thinking skills (Digitally Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy) tasks are embraced by both teachers and students. Numerous critical thinking skills are involved in a digital story telling exercise.

In terms of web 2.0 tools for digital story telling I was familiar with several of the tools listed by Levine (such as Animoto, Scrapblog, Slideshare, Flickr, to name a few). For this assignment, I chose to work with Prezi – which was one tool I had not previously worked with. To help narrow my selection of tools, I approached this assignment as if I were a classroom teacher reviewing Levine’s site. I wanted to create a digital story that could be used to demonstrate or model the expectations for creating a digital story. I tried to access each of tools suggested on our academic or school image as a K-8 student. Of the 64 sites listed by Levine, only 27, less than half, were accessible through out filter, Lightspeed. This helped me to narrow my choice. I wanted to use a tool that was easily accessible in the classroom. I also wanted to explore this assignment with a tool I had not used before.

I spent time with Vuvox, Xtranormal, and Prezi. Each of these tools seem to create dynamic presentations. One that I will explore further is Xtranormal- because of the text to speech functionality. Prezi, seemed to be the right tool for me for this story, as I did not need to have audio support. I also enjoyed the canvas feel to this tool, the idea of creating my own path. I wanted a tool that would create a dynamic presentation. Within Vuvox I didn’t find the storyboard template to be as intuitive as Prezi. The nature of my presentation, “telling the story of my volunteer experience” seemed to need authentic photos which eliminated any of the comic style storytelling tools. The emotion or connection to my digital story would not have been possible in a comic format.

There is great potential for the use of digital story telling in K-12 education from an instructional perspective as well as from that of a student created task.

Strengths of the storytelling approach include student motivation and engagement. The combination of text and visuals works well for learning concepts and making connections. Students would be very motivated to create and share their own media productions. A few strategies that may help out in the classroom, might be the teacher creation of a number of group logins which would be shared among group members. Alternately, students could be assigned different web 2.0 tool to showcase their digital story (similar to our assignment) and they could share their experiences working with the tool firsthand. Grade 7/8 students could work with a primary classroom to help them create the actual digital story. Starting with a topic such as “themselves” provides them with a topic that they are experts on and may require little to no research. Specific content areas could be integrated in the future. Digital story telling technology levels the playing field allowing students of all learning styles and abilities to create a professional looking presentation.

Limitations include technical difficulties such as the internet filter as previously mentioned, prohibitive costs as not all tools are free, the need for logins, access to adequate computers, small group vs. large group completion of task, student/teacher ability to easily edit/revise at home or after hours. With Prezi I ran in to an issue where the system seemed to crash when I tried downloading certain photos, possibly due to the size of the photos being utilized. This may be an issue for implementation in class.

Digital storytelling offers much potential for implementation in the classroom. I am eager to support teachers with my renewed energy and enthusiasm.