Digital storytelling
Digital storytelling is a short form of digital media production that enables individuals to create and distribute their narratives through online platforms. The method is frequently used in schools, museums, libraries, social work and health settings, and communities. They are thought to have educational, democratizing and therapeutic effects.
Digital storytelling is the practice of using digital media tools to tell stories, such as images, audio, videos, animation, and text to effectively tell a story. It focuses on emotional engagement, artistic endeavors, personal expression, and creativity. This combines narrative elements such as. It represent creative freedom and emotional expression: Not bound to data and can include fiction, personal stories, cultural traditions, or advocacy messages.
Digital storytelling is a community-based activity and should be distinguished from electronic literature, which is a literary movement where genres include hypertext fiction, digital poetry, interactive fiction, generative literature, and from other forms of digital narrative, for instance in video games or fan fiction.
Introduction
"Digital stories" are "short vignettes that combine storytelling with still pictures, video clips, music, and text using a variety of video software".Digital stories often present in compelling and emotionally engaging formats, and can be interactive. The media used may include the digital equivalent of film techniques, stills, audio only, or any of the other forms of non-physical media which individuals can use to tell a story or present an idea.
The term "digital storytelling" is sometimes also used more broadly to cover a range of digital narratives ; It is sometimes used to refer to film-making in general, and as of late, it has been used to describe advertising and promotion efforts by commercial and non-profit enterprises.
One can define digital storytelling as the process by which diverse peoples share their life stories and creative imaginings with others. This newer form of storytelling emerged with the advent of accessible media production techniques, hardware and software, including but not limited to digital cameras, digital voice recorders, iMovie, Microsoft Photos, Final Cut Express and WeVideo. These new technologies allow individuals to share their stories over the Internet on YouTube, Vimeo, compact discs, podcasts, and other electronic distribution systems.
One can think of digital storytelling as the modern extension of the ancient art of storytelling, now interwoven with digitized still and moving images and sound. Thanks to new media and digital technologies, individuals can approach storytelling from unique perspectives. Many people use elaborate non-traditional story forms, such as non-linear and interactive narratives.
Simply put, digital stories are multimedia presentations that combine a variety of communicative elements within a narrative structure. Media may include any combination of the following: text, images, video, audio, social media elements, or interactive elements.
Digital stories may be used as an expressive medium within the classroom to integrate subject matter with extant knowledge and skills from across the curriculum. Students can work individually or collaboratively to produce their own digital stories. These stories can be published on the internet, if desired.
Development
Digital storytelling has been used by Ken Burns, in the documentary The Civil War, cited as one of the first models of this genre. In his documentary, Burns used first-person accounts that served to reveal the heart and emotions of this tragic event in American history, as well as narration, archival images, modern cinematography, and music.The "short narrated films" definition of digital storytelling comes from a production workshop by Dana Atchley at the American Film Institute in 1993 that was used for training by the San Francisco Bay Area-based StoryCenter.
Components
The most important characteristics of a digital story are that it no longer conforms to the traditional conventions of storytelling because it is capable of combining still imagery, moving imagery, sound, and text, as well as being nonlinear and contain interactive features. The expressive capabilities of technology offer a broad base from which to integrate. It enhances the experience for both the author and audience and allows for greater interactivity.With the arrival of new media devices like computers, digital cameras, recorders, smartphones, and software, individuals may share their digital stories via the Internet, on discs, podcasts, or other electronic media. Digital storytelling combines the art of storytelling with multimedia features such as photography, text, audio, voiceover, hypertext and video. Digital tools and software make it easy and convenient to create a digital story. Common software includes iMovie and Microsoft Photos for user-friendly options. There are other online options and free applications as well such as WeVideo.
Educators often identify the benefit of digital storytelling as the array of technical tools from which students may select for their creative expression. Learners set out to use these tools in new ways to make meaningful content. Students learn new software, choose images, edit video, make voice-over narration, add music, create title screens, and control flow and transitions. Additionally, there is opportunity to insert interactive features for "reader" participation. It is possible to click on imagery or text in order to choose what will happen next, cause an event to occur, or navigate to online content.
Additionally, distinctions may be drawn between Web 2.0 storytelling and that of digital storytelling. Web 2.0 storytelling is said to produce a network of connections via social networking, blogging, and YouTube that transcends beyond the traditional, singular flow of digital storytelling. It tends to "aggregate large amounts of microcontent and creatively select patterns out of an almost unfathomable volume of information," therefore the bounds of Web 2.0 storytelling are not necessarily clear.
Another form of digital storytelling is the micromovie, which is "a very short exposition lasting from a few seconds to no more than 5 minutes in length. It allows the teller to combine personal writing, photographic images or video footage, narrative, sound effects, and music. Many people, regardless of skill level, are able to tell their stories through image and sound and share those stories with others."
Telling a digital story combines a narrative, whether it be fiction or non fiction, personal or general, and digital media. Digital media includes imaging, video, sound and all other forms of media then can be portrayed visually, the most simple of digital stories can even be a power point. The point is to convey a message through imagery, which a lot of times can be more effective than if just conveyed through sound. Another outlet for digital storytelling can be articulated through some social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram, where one might be constantly posting images accompanied by captions in order to portray the story of one's life. "A story can be as short as explaining how one misplaced one's keys in the morning or as long as a multivolume autobiography." The wonderful thing about telling a digital story is that there really are no rules. However, there are certain guidelines that are tried and true over time that make up better stories. The most important rule is don't be boring, tell a good story and the "truth" of a "story" lies in a process not the content. Joe Lambert and others who work at Storycenter and other places around the world train people in how to improve their stories during digital storytelling workshops by writing out the story and discussing many options of connecting with the material before recording it in a digital format and editing it into video. When one wants to capture the attention of one's audience, it is important to be passionate about the themes and or characters when telling any story. In order to sell the story, regardless of the medium, the artist may need to ask oneself about what stories could be more compelling before relating the story to others. Some of the best stories begin with one's own personal insights in order to find an interesting and profound dramatic story. It also has more personal stories to tell.
Uses in education
The StoryCenter model has also been adopted in education, especially in the US, sometimes as a method of building engagement and multimedia literacy. For example, the Bay Area Video Coalition and Youthworx Media Melbourne, the UK social enterprise Noise Solution and the Belgian non-profit Maks vzw employ digital storytelling to engage and empower young people at risk.Uses in primary and secondary education
"The idea of merging traditional storytelling with today's digital tools is spreading worldwide." Anybody today with a computer can create a digital story simply by answering such questions as "What do you think? What do you feel? What is important? How do we find meaning in our lives?" Most digital stories focus on a specific topic and contain a particular point of view. "These topics can range from personal tales to the recounting of historical events, from exploring life in one's own community to the search for life in other corners of the universe and every story in between."For primary grades the focus is related to what is being taught, a story that will relate to the students. For primary grades the story is kept under five minutes to retain attention. Vibrant pictures, age-appropriate music and narration are needed. Narration accompanied by subtitles can also help build vocabulary. Content-related digital stories can help upper-elementary and middle-school students understand abstract or layered concepts. For example, in one 5th grade class a teacher used digital storytelling to depict the anatomy of the eye and describe its relationship to a camera. A fifth grader said, "This year I have learned that places are not just physical matter but emotional places in peoples' hearts. iMovie has made all my thoughts and feelings come alive in an awesome movie."
These aspects of digital storytelling, pictures, music, and narration reinforce ideas and appeal to different learning types. Teachers can use it to introduce projects, themes, or any content area, and can also let their students make their own digital stories and then share them. Teachers can create digital stories to help facilitate class discussions, as an anticipatory set for a new topic, or to help students gain a better understanding of more abstract concepts. These stories can become an integral part of any lesson in many subject areas. Students can also create their own digital stories and the benefits that they can receive from it can be quite plentiful. Through the creation of these stories students are required to take ownership of the material they are presenting. They have to analyze and synthesize information as well. All of this supports higher-level thinking. Students are able to give themselves a voice through expressing their own thoughts and ideas.
Digital Storytelling', can be used by a class to explore local community institutions as well. Government school students from Bengaluru district of Karnataka, India used digital storytelling to design narratives of their interactions with local institutions such as banks, primary health centres, libraries, shops, police stations, post offices etc. Through these interactions, students attempted to deepen their understanding of the work of these institutions, their vision and challenges and how the institution members responded to these challenges. created by these students became curricular resources, specially in social sciences, for these schools as well.
When students are able to participate in the multiple steps of designing, creating and presenting their own digital stories, they can build several literacy skills. These include the following: Research skills by finding and analyzing information when documenting the story, writing skills when developing a script, and organization skills by managing the scope of the project within a time constraint. Learning about the use of technology is a skill that can be gained through learning to use a variety of tools, such as digital cameras and multimedia authoring software and presentation skills through the presentation of the story to an audience. Students also gain interview, interpersonal, problem-solving and assessment skills through completing their digital story and learning to receive and give constructive criticism.
Software such as iMovie or Microsoft Photos do all that is required.
Faculty and graduate students at the University of Houston have created a website, The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling, which focuses on the use of digital storytelling by teachers and their students across multiple content areas and grade levels.
The National Writing Project has a collaboration with the Pearson Foundation examining the literacy practices, the values, attitudes, beliefs and feelings, associated with their digital storytelling work with students.