New Thoughts on Digital Storytelling
Posted by Steve Denniston on March 6th, 2008
Digital Storytelling has been popular for a few years now, but I appreciated how Ladd Skelly emphasized the importance of preparation. It’s not about the technology – its the content, the collaboration, the mental processing (higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy) that is necessary to create an effective digital story.
This last session was actually a substitution for me. The session I had originally planned to attend somehow didn’t seem so appealing, and because I had seen Ladd present before, I knew I was guaranteed some quality ideas. I’m not going to try to regurgitate everything he said because you can get the big idea from his online handout (http://twi.classrooms.com/workshops/lskelly).
A couple thoughts: Ladd promoted using Microsoft Photo Story 3 for producing digital stories. For years, I had used and suggested Windows Movie Maker, but I can really see the value of using Photo Story 3. While I’m not sold entirely, I want to explore it further. Another option is VoiceThread (and Diane Zoellmer does a great job of demonstrating how to use that). I was also struck with the role of emotion in a digital story. As Ladd played some examples of the Civil War, the combination of the pictures of slain soldiers and stirring music got to me. We don’t forget things that impact us emotionally. The multimedia in a digital story opens the door for emotional impact.
A couple of great online resources for digital storytelling: Ken Burns (www.pbs.org/kenburns/) and Adobe (www.adobe.com/education/digkids/storytelling).
One final thought shared by Ladd regarding copyright: if the website doesn’t say anything about copyright, it likely means the images (or media) are copyrighted. The people who are not going to come after you for copyright violation are the ones who specifically state on their site the copyright policies.