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What is digital storytelling?
Lynn Connors:
Digital storytelling combines images, voice, text and music in a computer
software program to create a story or a short movie. Visual images can be
photographs, scanned images, and even 3D scanned objects. You then
combine that with music and a voice-over to create a digital story.
Traditionally a digital story should last between 3-5 minutes and it is driven
by the voice-over, the narration.
You may be asked to make a digital story in a variety of courses. Digital
storytelling is really applicable to many vocations. It also is a great way to
learn computer skills in a really fun and creative way. You may be asked to
create a digital story in an English class, in a multi-media class – I really
believe that digital storytelling can be adapted for nearly all curriculum. I
think one of the advantages of digital storytelling is that it is a multi-sensory
activity, so if you're not a strong literal learner, for example, you're a strong
visual learner or auditory learner, then digital storytelling is a fantastic way
to express your opinions and thoughts and your abilities.
For a lot of my students it's a fantastic way for them to be able to express
their thoughts and opinions and to then be able to have an audience view
their finished piece.
I've had lots of different stories, from dedications to family members to
current issues they have a real concern about to some really funny comedy
pieces as well.
I taught a beautiful group of career women, I had sisters in my class and the
two sisters did a dedication to their mum who had passed away. So they
created a digital story about their mum and got all the photos they could
possibly find and had quotes and music that she loved put to the piece, and it
ended up being a really beautiful dedication to their mum
Another were my disability students who produced this fantastic digital
story all about global issues to do with children, to do with kidnapping,
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trafficking, abuse, and their message at the end was to remind all of us how
precious innocent children are and that they need to be handled with care –
another fantastic piece.
I'm currently working on a very honourable project with digital storytelling,
recording the Koori elders' stories of the past and creating digital stories of
their stories. That's been a really fantastic project to work on as well.
Software and tools
Lynn Connors:
If you own a Microsoft personal computer and have XP or the new
operating system Vista, it comes with a movie-making program called
MovieMaker. That's the most common editing program that I use. If you
have an Apple Macintosh computer they have a fantastic movie program
that comes with their computer and it's called iMovie. Either of these
programs are what we would call basic editing programs, they're very easy
to use. You can go to much more sophisticated programs for editing,
program software like PremierPro, but they are usually for people who are
trying to specialise or are going to specialise in editing. It's really important
when you're editing images to have as much hard-drive available and also as
high a RAM as you can possibly get for your computer. You'll need a
scanner and a DVD burner.
Tips for digital stories
Marc Pelusi:
Digital stories are a great way of visualising a point of view. The different
types of technologies you might need for that are a video camera, your
editing software, so some type of multi media editing software. If you have
got PowerPoint, it will do that. You will need some type of voice recording
software, and something to mix it all together.
A really good example of digital stories can be found at a website called
'Digication.com' this is an American site and it's a place where E Portfolios
are kept for certain students and there are some fantastic examples of digital
stories up there.
When you are making your digital story boards, it's really important that you
acknowledge the original maker of the content, so if you are sourcing
something from YouTube, or some other video website, you need to let your
teacher know in a bibliography where you got that information from, so they
know that you are not passing it off as your own content and that you are
recognising copyright of a third party.
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© NSW DET 2007
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