OK, so now you know how to narrate your PowerPoint files. But be honest, do they convey the passion you feel for your subject? Do they inspire passion in your students? And speaking of your students, how are their PowerPoint presentations? Do they show deep understanding? Are they well written and edited? Digital Storytelling may just be what you are looking for to both capture your passion and inspire a passion for learning in your students.
Leslie Rule of the Digital Storytelling Association defines it as follows:
"Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. Throughout history, storytelling has been used to share knowledge, wisdom, and values. Stories have taken many forms. Stories have been adapted to each successive medium that has emerged, from the circle of the campfire, to the silver screen, and now the computer screen."
Educause published this article in January 2007: "7 Things you should Know About Digital Storytelling (pdf)"
Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War used techniques employed in most digital stories: still images with voice narration of the story and background music that adds to the mood or story line. Your basic narrated PowerPoint is technically a digital story, but my guess is that it is short on passion or lacks a story line focus.
For example, here is the now classic Gettysburg Address on PowerPoint. Compare that to a Digital Story of the same topic. Odds are that few students would have slept through or quickly forgotten the Digital Story version because of the combined impact of words and images. Think of digital storytelling as an antidote to "Death by PowerPoint" -- yours or theirs.
Tell me a fact and I'll Learn
Tell me a truth and I'll believe
Tell me a story and I'll remember
Gail Matthews-DeNatale, Ph.D., Digital Storytelling Tips and Resources, 2008
Digital storytelling provides for student engagement through project-based learning that requires reflection, deep learning and integration of feelings, ideas, facts, images and sound. Each digital story is an electronic portfolio unto itself. Students are also increasingly comfortable with story as a medium and a means of engagement, particularly with a more diverse and non-traditional student population (Moon, 2007).
NEW! There are 2 Digital Storytelling workshops available this fall; October 17th and November 14th. Sign up through the Reservation Desk.
While there are many commercial tools available to create digital stories, ATC is recommending faculty and students use these free and widely available resources available on most Microsoft installations, in the open computer labs and on eDesktop:
If Photo Story3 is not on your computer, you can download it for free from Microsoft.
Creating a storyboard is the best way for visualizing the flow of the story, organizing thoughts, images and audio. It can also be part of the graded assignment and/or peer reviewed. Here are several different storyboard templates that you or your students can work with:
While images and music play a critical role in digital sories, the importance of a well written script cannot be over looked. This is the foundation on which the story is built and the driving force of the narrative. Below are two tools to assits in developing the story.
Students can easily get caught up in the process of making their digital story and lose sight of the assignment's objective(s). For this reason we recommend that you give the students a rubric that clearly states the points which will be used to grade their project. This sample rubric (pdf) can be used, or you can create your own at Rubistar. There you can search under Digital Storytelling and select from the thousands available and modify to your needs, or you can select Digital Storytelling under the topic headings and create your own.
If you search for Digital Storytelling on the web you will come across over 500,000 hits. Here is a short list of some of the best sites:
This list will be added to as we discover new sites. If you come across one in your wanderings, please email the information to Karen Barth so we can update the site.
updated 10/17/08
