Digital StorytellingIn the School Curriculum

Tom Banaszewski

techszewski@gmail.com

Techszewski.blogs.com

Ten Years and 500 Stories Later

TEACH STORY!

Multimedia Storytelling

Center for Digital Storytelling

Place Narratives

A Problem in DS

Digital Literacy

“What we ought to be developing in our schools is not simply a narrow array of literacy skills limited to a restrictive range of meaning systems, but a spectrum of literacies...”

- Elliot W. Eisner writes The Kind of Schools We Need

The Formula

Story LiteracyMedia LiteracyVisual Literacy

Digital Literacy

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Defining Digital Storytelling

the practice of combining personal narrative with multimedia to produce a short autobiographical movie

Defining Story

“a narrative account constructed around four central themes: character, conflict, struggle, goal”

- Kendal Haven Write Right

Other Types of Digital Stories

Presence of student voice vs. regurgitating facts

Digital story vs. digital report

7 Elements (CDS model)

1. Point of view

2. Dramatic question

3. Emotional content

4. Individual voice

5. Soundtrack

6. Economy

7. Pacing

Will My Name Be Shouted Out

“…media production gives voice to students who

are otherwise silenced in their schools and

communities. It allows students to represent their

experiences and their communities as cultural

insiders, instead of the incessant misrepresentation

of them outside their communities.”

- Kathleen Tyner Literacy in the Digital Age

Teach Story… or else

Students gather any and all images related to their topic.

Students cannot explain the difference between a digital story, slideshow and multimedia report.

Assessment becomes subjective when the story, visual and media skills have not been adequately taught.

The Challenges

Weak story literacy skills

Absence of media literacy instruction

Combining storytelling, creative writing, visual literacy & media literacy

Time

Teaching software vs teaching storytelling

Multiliteracies

“The Multiliteracies argument runs like this: our

personal, public and working lives are changing in

some dramatic ways, and these changes are

transforming our cultures and the ways we

communicate. This means that the way we have

taught literacy, and what counts for literacy, will also

have to change.”

(Cope and Kalantzis 1996)

5 Steps - 5 Stages of DS Project

1. Write a two to three minute first person story

2. Collect images to accompany the story

3. Import images into the computer

4. Record the voice over.

5. Align images with script.

My Assumptions of DS

Developmentally appropriate expectations

are important because digital storytelling

challenges students to synthesize personal

experience with narrative, visual, media and

technical skills

Write Here, Right Now

“Far too often, teachers find

themselves teaching writing when

they’ve never had the experience of

being writers themselves” (Salpeter

2005)

Need for Media Literacy

Deconstruction IS instruction

British Film Institute (BFI) Education Resources

American Film Institute (AFI) Curriculum

What NOT to do

Beware the bandwagon

How will you teach story?

Best Practices

StreetSide Stories Model – personal change theme

5 Questions, 5 Note-cards

Story Core and the VPS

Writing the Story

“Stories are about one of two things: …Either something is coming into your life and you’re changing because of it or you’re going somewhere outside of yourself into a new space and that’s changing you. It’s always about change…”

- Daniel Weinshenker

Teaching Story

How was the digital story different than the written story?

Why did I choose the images I did for the story?

Which of the images illustrated the word I said exactly?

Which images were symbols for what I was saying?

Why was this an important story to tell other people?

What was the conflict or problem in the story?

Technical Choices

2 computers 20 students

Story literacy OVER tool literacy

iMovie (tutorial online), PhotoStory, MovieMaker, Adobe Premiere, FCP

Options: VoiceThread, Scratch, Powerpoint

Assessing Digital Stories

Rubric focus on story or technical?

Questions

How will you implement DS in your classroom/school?