Storytelling in a Digital World

Digital storytelling is an increasingly popular technological tool used in the classroom. Digital storytelling is an approach to telling stories unlike the typical oral traditions or reading aloud from storybooks. The stories last anywhere from one to ten minutes and engage listeners not only with the words of the story but also with images, audio clips, and music. With so many computer-based tools available, digital stories reach students of many different learning styles and profiles. 

With so many options at our fingertips, teachers can implement digital storytelling in the classroom in a myriad of ways. For example, I would first use a digital story in my classroom to introduce myself to my students. I typically only talk for a couple of minutes in order to introduce myself, but that approach only reaches the auditory learners. Using a digital format to tell my story to my students reaches visual, auditory, and even kinesthetic learners with photographs, music, and audio and video clips. By using digital storytelling to introduce myself to my class, I would also be modeling its use for my students. They could thus see what digital stories can do and show for when they create their own in the future.

Another way I might incorporate digital stories in my English classroom would be to have students write their own stories (using their 6-trait writing skills) and translate them into digital form. The students could write their stories, record them, then find appropriate sounds and images to supplement their stories. This would exercise their writing abilities, computer proficiency, and oral communication skills all in one project.

I could also integrate digital storytelling into my literature lesson plans for students. I would place students into small groups to create a digital story from the perspective of a character in the novel we are reading in class. Students would work together in writing from viewpoint of their assigned character and how that character might feel about a certain event in the plot. The students would record their character stories, add matching images and sounds, and present to the class so that everyone gets a chance to learn about each character. On any given day, we could be listening and watching digital stories about Prince Hamlet’s struggle to expose his uncle-king Claudius, Boo Radley’s choice to save Jem Finch, or Colonel Graff’s defense of his treatment of Ender Wiggin.

I believe digital storytelling can be a great asset to any classroom if used appropriately. The digital stories should always be implemented with learning as their primary goal. Digital storytelling promotes creativity, fosters computer skills, and encourages both teachers and students to work beyond the written word. I can see many possibilities for my future classroom and the digital story format.