Below is my research paper on Digitall Storytelling. Digital Storytelling can be a useful tool in the classroom to present information to your students in an engaging and entertaining manner.
Mary Menner
East Tennessee State University
MEDA 5400
Digital Storytelling is an emerging technology in the 21st Century that was developed from the works of the late Dana Atchley, who was a performer, an artist, and a storyteller. Atchley worked with his good friend/ producer, Joe Lambert, and created an autobiography by combining his voice, old photos, film footage, and anecdotes from his childhood. The end result was an autobiography that was personal and compelling. (Saltpeter, 2005) The Center for Digital Storytelling was established from Atchley’s work.
We see this new format in our daily lives. Ken Burns perfected this new technology in his documentaries on the Civil War, Baseball and Jazz. He took still images and with the camera zoomed in and across the still photo while back filling the experience with sound and voiceover to enhance the storytelling experience. This new style of digital storytelling is also working its way into our daily experiences. It is common to see this technology worked into wedding celebrations where images of the bride and groom are blended with music and commentary. This new style of technology is becoming more common at 50 year wedding anniversary celebrations, graduation and birthday parties and even funerals. This new form of technology affords people the ability to enhance the story that is being told. There was a time when a picture was worth a thousand words. This new technology is now turning a picture into a story of ten thousand words.
There are seven elements of effective digital stories; a point of view, a dramatic question, emotional content, economy, pacing, voice, and a soundtrack. (Bull & Kajder, 2004) By beginning with a point of view, the writer is able to make the story personal. The writer wants to begin with a dramatic question that will help to intrigue and grab the attention of the audience. In order for the story to be effective the writer will want to stir some type of emotion from his audience as well. Digital storytelling is usually only two to three minutes in length so it is important that the writer know what important concept or message he/she wants the story to convey. The pacing of the story becomes vital due to the economy or length of the story. The writer is able to personalize the story even more by adding his voice as the narrator. Finally, adding music or a soundtrack to the story can make the story even more compelling to the audience. Operating systems such as Microsoft and Apple offer special applications such as Movie Maker, iMovie, and MS Photo Story. There are several Web 2.0 applications such as Animoto and VoiceThread that also make it easy to create your own personal digital story.
Digital storytelling can be a very valuable tool in the classroom in many content areas because it allows the student to use prior knowledge and experiences to personalize their story. This technology can be used to make connections in all curriculums such as science, mathematics, language arts, and social studies. By using the digital storytelling in a language arts class it can help to engage struggling readers and writers who have never been given the opportunity for self expression. This type of self expression can help to boost the confidence of the students when they are able to see what they have created. Teachers can use this technology as an instructional tool when introducing new content to his/her students by using already created stories as their hook. Researchers such as Burmark (2004) have found that integrating visual images with written text both enhances and accelerates student comprehension, and digital storytelling is an especially good technology tool for collecting, creating, analyzing, and combining visual images with written text. Mathematic concepts may also be taught using digital storytelling. Children learn math through word problems and these problems may now be put into a story format that may make the concept being taught easier to grasp. Social Studies is another area where digital storytelling may be integrated into the classroom. Students can create stories about people of history, significant events from the past, or a story to help understand concepts such as government and how it works.
There has been research done on digital storytelling to examine if the integration of this technology into the classroom is effective in engaging students and the teacher’s level of expertise and knowledge of the technology plays a vital role as to its success in the classroom. The study did find that the students were more engaged when it came to the learning process when digital storytelling was used. Evaluation of students’ stories shows that overall, students did well in their projects and their stories met many of the pedagogical and technical attributes of digital stories. (Sadik, 2008) One problem that seemed to be apparent was that the students’ stories did not always connect with the subject matter that was being taught. This research also showed that the teachers were not always proficient in using such applications as Photo Story. It seems to me that there needs to be significant teacher training with this type of technology for it to be effective in the classroom.
There are a multitude of advantages to using digital storytelling in the classroom. One of the most important is that it allows the student to be more actively involved with the learning process. It allows the students to be creative and express themselves through their own knowledge and personal experiences. This type of learning experience that has a personal element attached to it helps the student to comprehend and retain the information better. Because digital storytelling is short in nature, two to three minutes, this allows the students to share with the class what they have created. Students are usually proud of what they create and sharing with the class can help to boost the confidence and self esteem of many students, especially those that struggle academically. This type of technology also promotes collaboration among the students in the classroom. No matter the content area, digital storytelling can help to improve the reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills of all the students. Another advantage to this technology is that it would allow the teacher to provide differentiated instruction to his/her students.
I feel that digital storytelling would be a technology that I would integrate into my classroom. I believe that the children would be more engaged and inspired when given the opportunity to create their own personal story and present it to the class. One of the problems that I see with this particular technology is the accessibility within the classroom. Each classroom that I have observed in thus far has had a limited number of computers in the classroom. I am actually observing in a classroom right now that has four outdated computers and an overhead projector. Unfortunately, those students who do not have access to the technology will be at a disadvantage. Given the time constraints on the teacher and the limitations of technology in some schools it might be beneficial to do a class project which would allow all the students to contribute to a class story. Students today must be exposed to the benefits of technology therefore educators must help pave the way by providing them with the opportunity to interface with it as much as possible.
With technology becoming more user friendly it won’t be long before this style of expression is more common in our school systems. What’s really great about this technology is that it will allow students the ability to express their feelings and emotions in a way that will enhance the whole learning experience for all the students and also help in creating a higher level of tolerance among all students. With a greater capability for a student to express their feelings this technology can provide a bridge to connect students in a way never before seen in our educational system.
References
Bull, G. & Kajder, S. (2004). Digital Storytelling in the Language Arts Classroom. Learning & Leading with Technology, 32(4), 46-49. Retrieved from ERIC EJ697294
Burmark, L. (2004). Visual presentations that prompt, flash & transform. Media and Methods, 40(6), 4-5.
Robin, B. (2008) ‘Digital Storytelling: A Powerful Technology Tool for the 21st Century Classroom’, Theory Into Practice, 47(3), 220-228. Retrieved from ERIC EJ799668
Sadik, A. (2008). Digital storytelling: a meaningful technology-integrated approach for engaged student learning. Education Tech Research Development, 56(4), 487-506.
Saltpeter, Judy (2005). Telling Tales with Technology—Digital storytelling is a new twist on the ancient art of oral narrative. Technology & Learning, 25(7), 18-22. Retrieved from ERIC EJ710824
