Student voices: using digital storytelling
Featured in the Oct. 2008 issue of the NJEA REVIEW
by Patricia Bruder, EIRC
"After a digital storytelling is shared, it should be remembered for its soul, not the bells and whistles of technology." —Bernajean Porter
Storytelling impacts literacy. Digital storytelling is an even more powerful tool, as described by Jason Ohler in the “DAOW of literacy in a storytelling environment” on his website, Digital and traditional storytelling. DAOW stands for Digital, Art, Oral and Written literacies. Ohler describes the processes involved in digital storytelling, and the website includes a storytelling rubric and an excellent digital storytelling storyboard template.
Brenda’s Blog at Education World relays the 10 reasons for implementing digital storytelling in the classroom. Digital storytelling:
- Inspires dedication
- Encourages creativity to work
- Promotes problem solving
- Embraces diversity
- Captivates attention
- Piques interest in writing
- Fosters group dynamics
- Addresses different learning styles
- Creates a positive classroom climate
- Incorporates multiple intelligences.
Getting started
One way to get started with online storytelling is to conduct oral interviews. Oral storytelling is a rich tradition and technology adds digital enhancements to create an interactive experience. Listeners get to see photos as well as hear the story, and the storyteller gets feedback from the listeners, creating a loop that widens as the stories gain more public exposure.
StoryCorps’ mission is “to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.” The main activity of Story Corps is a traveling StoryBooth, a mobile recording studio that includes a facilitator who walks you and your interviewee through the session, provides you with a CD of your recorded interview, and takes photos. Your story with photos is then archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. But, if you can’t get to the traveling exhibit, you can still visit the website to view others’ stories, and become involved in other ways. You can get ideas for interviewing including suggested questions, or let StoryCorps generate customized questions. There is also guidance on using recording equipment and conducting the interview. For $150 you can also rent a storykit that includes all the equipment you need.
While StoryCorps focuses on the oral component of storytelling, Capturing Stories, Capturing Lives: An Introduction to Digital Storytelling by David S. Jakes and Joe Brennan emphasizes the use of photographic or still-frame storytelling. Illinois educators Jakes and Brennan provide step-by-step suggestions for building your own digital storytelling program. They also include two caveats: you’ll need to help students get over PTS (PowerPoint Transition Syndrome); and – ouch! – avoid cooperative projects. While there are benefits to group projects, once you read their article, you’ll understand that Jakes and Brennan are referring to the highly personal aspect of storytelling. Students will take risks that lead to quality and production when they are highly engaged. Many more articles from these authors can be found at JakesOnline.org.
Getting Started: A Step-by-Step Approach to Creating a Digital Story from Material Found On the Web from the University of Houston outlines important steps in creating digital stories:
- Define, Collect, Decide
- Select, Import, Create
- Decide, Write, Record, Finalize
- Demonstrate, Evaluate, Replicate.
On this site you’ll find educational goals and objectives for storytelling, many content area examples, and links to articles about digital storytelling and other Web 2.0 components.
Story Arts Story Telling Lesson Plans and Activities provides a wealth of story starter ideas including painting interpretation, a treasure hunt involving scrambled fairy tales, an old-time radio show format, finding stories in songs, creating a story circle, telling local histories, collecting family stories, puzzle stories, imaginary journeys, and more. There are suggestions for speaking and listening for critical analysis, and a listening skills rubric for encouraging active listening.
Another good evaluation rubric is found at DigiTales – The Art of Telling Digital Stories. You can also custom design your own rubric to evaluate specific skills (to assess the preparation process, content knowledge, format/structure, text, voice, sound and image communication, and design, presentation and interactivity of communication) using DigiTales Digital Media Scoring Guides or select guidelines for peer review.
MySecureCyberspace from Carnegie Mellon provides guidelines for using digital photos and sharing them online. This site describes “protective measures” you can take including:
- Respecting the privacy of others
- Limiting views to family and friends
- Using backup tools
- Using copyright protection tools (see Flickr for a simple description of Creative Commons copyrights).
You can also use MySecureCyberspace as a springboard for discussions about ethics and legal issues surrounding online publishing.
The tools
While many sites allow you to post videos, this column deals mostly with telling stories through pictures or photographs, which involves only a few free and readily available resources including pictures, audio, software and online websites for story creation.
One of the most creative tools we’ve found for creating digital stories was brought to us by teacher Heather Sullivan from Freehold Regional High School District. Sullivan is NJEA’s newest blogger and uses Voicethread, unique for its interactive capabilities (see her Discovery Education Blog posts). Students post a picture, document or video to the site, and invite viewers to post comments in any one or more of five ways: voice (with a microphone or over a phone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Viewers can also “doodle” on the picture, allowing them to illustrate their comments as they go. Accounts are free for K-12 teachers who can set up group identities and moderate discussions. Stories can be embedded into your website or blog for easy access.
Storytop is a great storytelling editor for younger students. You can create stories, then drag and drop from the provided clipart (people, animals, fish, reptiles, plants, buildings, furniture, transport and weather), add a background, then add your own dialogue. Teachers can create classroom groups and link up with other classes. Students can share their stories and receive invitations to view other student storyboards.
Imageloop is an incredibly easy online website for creating your own customized slide show. All you need to do is locate photos on your computer, upload and invite friends and family. Photos can be private or public or by invitation only.
Another incredible tool is Animoto. I don’t know how it does it, but this site actually analyzes your pictures and can select music from its library or yours to accompany them in a slide show production that has the look and feel of a professional movie trailer. You can download, e-mail, or post it on your website or blog. And if that isn’t enough, you can “remix” your presentation so that no two videos are ever the same. For classroom use, see Animoto for Education.
Photostory 3 for Windows, free software from Microsoft, allows you to use your photos to create a story using motion, narration and music. You can edit your story and create slideshows that include transitions, special effects and soundtracks. And for Macs, take a look at the Apple iPhoto website, which includes tutorials, ideas and lesson plans.
Resources for pictures, audio
You can guide your student projects and develop visual literacy by using teacher created copyright free kits at Kitzu. Each kit has photographs, music, narratives, videos and text built around subject area curriculum. Downloading the free kits gives you access to the materials to use in your class as a teaching tool, or students can use pieces of the kit in their own classroom presentations.
Pics4Learning “is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students. The Pics4Learning collection consists of thousands of images that have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers. Unlike many Internet sites, permission has been granted for teachers and students to use all of the images donated to the Pics4Learning collection.”
Flickr and Photobucket are popular, easy-to-use, online photo sharing sites. You can use them to resize your photos to manageable website dimensions.
Great sounds can be downloaded for free from a number of sites including Hal Davidson’s handout, Media for Motivating Minds Master List of Resources, and Digitales Music and Sound Resources to Explore (includes databases and search engines, music files, music clips, and sound files). A1 Free Sound Effects categories include animal, cartoon, household, people, radio, siren, sports, television, transportation, weather, and weapon sounds. Be sure to turn down your speakers – all of the sound effects are LOUD and clear (my favorite is thunder). And rounding out our list is Wavcentral.com. Your students are sure to get some great ideas with these sound effects from movies, TV, FX (special effects) and commercials. Right click to download sounds to your computer.
For music, you have to check out Freeplay Music. The incredibly cool sounds include music from acid jazz and acoustic to world mix and world symphonic, and even sound effects for adventure/action and dark/mysterious scenes, all downloadable for free for:
- Personal non-commercial use (non-revenue generating). This excludes broadcast use of any kind, including, without limitation, web, blog, and podcast use; or
- Educational, non-commercial use (this is limited to student use on school grounds for in classroom projects--not broadcast).
Partners in Rhyme houses free music loops (background music for your multimedia project) and free sound effects including ambient sounds, vehicle sound effects, human sound effects, general sounds, animals, and weird sounds (e.g., boing, tick tock, monster growls). Not everything is free on this site (royalty free is not the same as free royalty free) so be sure to navigate carefully. Kids will not want to stop once they get started, so a good suggestion is to download select sounds to CD, flash drives or a public directory and allow your students to use them (this is one time where limiting choices is a good thing).
Additional resources
Storytelling Cookbook--sample chapters about finding stories and interviewing techniques, the seven elements of storytelling (point of view, dramatic question, emotional content, the gift of voice, the power of soundtrack, economy and pacing), approaches to scripting, storyboarding, digitizing story elements, introduction to Photoshop elements, and introduction to digital video editing software.
HP: Getting your kids started with taking digital photos--choosing a camera, photography basics.
RiptÔ--Although not its stated purpose, teachers can create unique graphic organizers using this software that allows you to “rip” images or text from your computer or the Internet, and arrange them in whatever way you like.
Hidden Stories: A Historical Narrative Project--one teacher’s process for digital story telling. Includes rubrics, assignments, tools and links.
Digital Storytelling--overview, storytelling, planning, creating and delivering digital stories; nice examples.
Storynory--free audio stories, including original stories, fairy tales, classic authors, educational and junior stories that can be used for ESL students.
Digital Kids Club--from Adobe, includes digital photography and video lessons.
Digital Storytelling--great links to digital storytelling in education, digital family stories, international digital storytelling.
Do you have a topic for a future Toolbox column? Send your suggestions to njeareview@njea.org or to Patricia Bruder at patbruder@yahoo.com.
Located in Sewell, the Educational Information and Resource Center (EIRC) is a public agency specializing in education-related programs and services for teachers, parents, schools communities, and non-profit organizations throughout New Jersey. Learn more about EIRC at www.eirc.org or call 856-582-7000. Contact Patricia Bruder at patbruder@yahoo.com.