Digital Storytelling

When I began this course I realized a requirement was to create and publish a digital story so I started planning what I would do. I came up with my story idea and talked it over with Dawson one of my grade 3 students, who struggles academically but is very artistic and great with computers. I explained that I wanted to create a story for the next year grade 3 students and he agreed to do the artwork and have it used in the story. Dawson chose Paint to create his pictures. I then had to decide how to present the story, using text or audio. I chose to use text captions as I wanted it to be told from Dawson’s perspective and not have my voice intrude.

After experimenting with various storytelling tools I chose PhotoPeach to tell my digital story. All of the tools I looked at were interesting but I needed a tool that allowed me to use student created images from my computer and one that would be easy for primary students to work with at the beginning of the year. The pictures Dawson created were the story. PhotoPeach allowed me to upload jpegs, tell the story through captions, add music to the background and embed the video into a blog. The tool is easy to use; the work can be edited at any time and shared very easily with classmates.

PhotoPeach is a tool I will use next year with my students to have them introduce themselves to the new student population who will be entering our school, during the “I am Unique” unit either through a centre activity in the classroom or in the computer lab as a whole class. Whilst the tool is simple and easy to use it will enable primary children to produce powerful digital stories about a wide variety of topics and make them interactive by including a quiz if they choose to do so. Being able to embed the stories into their blogs is a real bonus; students can then review their classmates’ work!