Digital Storytelling

  “Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.” 

                                                                      Sue Monk Kidd “The life of Bees”

     What happens to our mind when we read or listen to something? Our brains get into a whirlpool of incredible scenes, which open an imaginary world for us; world where all of the characters, scenes, places, sounds come to life. This revival gives us a new perception and special understanding of events. One of such tools that revives our senses and our mind is storytelling.

     Storytelling has always been an important part of the history, and the way through which the stories have been told has evolved with each civilization. Storytelling is the avid proof of the events that happened to us, events that changed our lives and lives of the whole nations and events that brought the evidence of 100 years ago to life. Storytelling is the only thread that connects us with the past. It is the basis of the history paved centuries ago which was presented from bards in ancient courts, scribes, to newspapers, television, and Internet. As we keep moving forward the age of technology gifted us with an opportunity to combine our stories with digital technology which allows telling our stories in a new way, through voice, text, images, audio and video. This type of blending is called digital storytelling.

      We teachers have always tried to find a better way to motivate our students to learn.. Eventually, we made sure that the best way to do this is through digital media. One of the tools that engaged both teachers and students is digital storytelling.

     Digital storytelling has emerged over the last few years, but it has already found its place as a powerful technology tool for the 21^st century classroom. Using images, music, visuals, animation, media, audio, multimedia, sound effects, and voice we as the teachers empower our students to create and produce products that are different than just traditional paper writing and story writing, which students are mostly reluctant to do and find it boring. Digital storytelling, on the contrary, makes the process of writing even more natural and enjoyable.

      Creating digital stories makes students entertained, because they are able to open up more creative and innovative ways of organizing and producing their material; fosters their critical thinking and problem-solving skills; promotes collaboration and communication with their peers; develops their technological skills as while working on their digistories  students have to operate programs like PowerPoint and Windows Movie Maker . What the digital stories offer is the ability to give the student a voice. When students record themselves, by adding voiceover narration, they, first of all, build their confidence in public speaking and are able to express themselves openly and, secondly, develop fluency and accuracy in their speech. Along with freedom to express their ideas, students are actually engaged! One of the advantages of digital stories is that their “message” is intended to the worldwide audience through uploading them to the internet and posting them in the blogs. The content of digital stories is diverse. It can vary from sharing personal narrative, visual poetry, clay animation, virtual filed trip; virtual tour to photo story.

     Digital storytelling is one of those effective tools that dives students into interactive learning environment, and develops the skills students need to be successful in our technology world. The only thing that students need to do is to find a story that best suits the type of project they are working on, tell it from their own unique perspective, integrate emotions that can reach the audience through appropriate use of images, words, sounds and, finally, what’s important use their own voice, both in the audio and in the script. Once students make use of this type of work, they won’t stop, because it involves them completely. From the educational perspective, digital stories can serve as a good way of assessing students through e-portfolios that demonstrate students’ learning and growth.

      Digital storytelling bestows students a power, a power to create and that way turns them into real digital story/ moviemakers, who can help us understand how much a 2-4-minute video can affect us, “shake” and change us and our lives forever. Of course, you may say that we have movies which can also revive the same feelings and emotions. However, in this case…

    “The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.” 

                                                                  Brandon Sanderson “The Way of Kings”

    The privilege of the digital stories is that they make you think and reflect upon something that you may have never thought of, make you question life around you; the path that been traversed ; dig deeper into the issue of a particular question, understand and learn something; shed tears and revive your memory that has been buried deep down.

http://mcli.maricopa.edu/files/storytelling/movies/woman-became.m4v

http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/view_story.cfm?vid=411&otherid=featured&d_title=Featured%20Digital%20Stories

    Digital storytelling is an amazing and powerful high tech tool that gives you an opportunity to tell your own story in a completely new format, where digital is not the difficult part, but storytelling is, which means all you have to do is to choose, find or create a story that you really want to tell, a story that will amaze the whole world, and as it basically happens in the end, change it.

    Dare Digital Storytellers, compose your stories and amaze us!!!
    Here is my digistory!!! I hope you'll like it.