Digital Storytelling in Teaching and Learning

How do you envision the role of digital storytelling as either an instructional and/or learning tool.

I envision digital storytelling as a minor supplement to teaching with a potentially larger role in student learning. As for my classroom teaching, I imagine myself limiting the use of digital storytelling more to the role of Animoto videos introducing topics and time periods to the class in much the way the example video we viewed on the 1920s did. I may occassionally use digital storytelling as a significant part of instruction, but it would certainly not constitute the core of my classroom teaching; I think it would probably be much better to use as an extra learning tool on a class webpage, giving back ground information on history subjects. I mainly see the use of digital storytelling as an optioinal tool for students to express their comprehension of material on major projects. I would certainly encourage students to make a creative digital presentation, but I would not require them to use digital media on an out-of-class project. I think the best thing about the digital storytelling option is that it gives students who are visual/auditory learners to express themselves and their learning in a much more suitable manner than perhaps writing a five page essay.

Digital Fairytales

The scrapblog was the easiest one for me to do. I think it is also my best story probably due to some problems with the pictures I used for ANIMOTO. I feel that the music, however, is not very appropriate for this story, or more so, the fact that the music does not change as the story has somewhat of a twisted ending. The lame choices in music was the biggest disappointment with this one.







I think this program probably is the best one for telling a story, but my story is sort of lame because the pictures I had available could have been better, plus it was awkward for me to talk into the microphone without having major points to say. I think if I had a better idea for a story, this would have been the best program to use.













ANIMOTO was the easiest to finish but certainly the program with the least publishing control. I was unable to play the song that I wanted ("Evening" by the Moody Blues) due to copyright and editing limitations. I think the video would be better, but, apparently, the pictures I took were not of a good enough quality to look good in a "blownup" image. I think the video is decent for a trial run though. Most of all, for all of the programs, I hate the limits of the copyrights. In these cases, with limited time, I only used my own pictures and the programs' available music to avoid the copyright hassle.