Digital storytelling is something unique to the individual. I came across digital storytelling being used in the education field about 4 or 5 years ago. From my first experiences with digital storytelling I knew it could be a medium for students to really get excited about the writing process and learn some technology skills along the way. At the time I was a sixth grade special education resource teacher and worked with a co-teacher to develop a series of projects surrounding digital storytelling and the skills needed to produce a quality movie. Along the way I went to a three day training workshop on Digital storytelling organized by the Center for Digital Storytelling. Their website has some great examples of digital stories produced by attendees of their workshops.
The first movie covers many things but gets the students to start thinking of how different components of a movie come together and how essential planning each part truly is to the final product. Our first project asks the students to complete a one minute video using digital still images and music to describe an emotion. I cover the basics of how to use a camera and upload pictures but extend their knowledge to copyright laws and fair use. Teaching them how to create a movie starts with storyboards and moves into the collaboration of iPhoto, iTunes, and iMovie. This past year we spent many class sessions on copyright and fairuse because more and more students are entering a digital world where issues related to copyright come into play. We have also added the idea of Creative Commons to equation. (The links embedded in this description contain some resources we have used.) We gave the students five hours of production time to complete their project. Which for many students was not enough time and they barely finished. Who would have ever thought it would take five hours to complete a one minute movie? That question was heard over and over and no one could quite answer it.
Project two builds on the skills of project one but adding the component of narration. The last two years project two has asked the students to narrate a poem either written by themselves or another person. We also give the students the option to use royalty free music or to create their own music using GarageBand. Students additionally have the option of taking digital still images or drawing and scanning pictures. Storyboarding is crucial during this process because the images that appear on the screen have to match what each student is saying in the poem. The students' creativity really begin to take flight during this project.
The third part of the digital storytelling project is the creation of a newscast with students writing their scripts in response to the questions, “What makes our school special? What can make it even better?” The students build upon their skills to include editing digital video using iLife software. Students use conventional news broadcasts as a model. They work collaboratively in small heterogeneous groups, determined by us to ensure a balance of skills and to maximize individual student’s strengths. The groups are organized around the themes of traffic and weather, sports, technology, business and community events. To produce their newscasts, the students first have to write their scripts. They schedule and conduct interviews with faculty members to enhance their news segments. Interview questions were formulated by the group and interviews are conducted by “reporters” and videotaped by “camera people”. Upon completion of the interviews, students used the technique of “Claim – Evidence – Interpretation” to effectively integrate video clips of taped interviews into their news segments. The reporters make a claim about their topic, support their claim with evidence from the adults in their interviews, and then interpret the information for their viewers. In some groups, the students have to critically view up to fifteen minutes of taped interviews to glean the most relevant bits of information to serve as evidence to support the claims they were making as reporters. Each completed news piece was limited to two minutes in length and was analogous to a paragraph in a narrative piece of writing. Students audition to be the co-anchors whose script acts as the introduction and conclusion to the essay and the transitions between pieces.
The final activity of the digital storytelling project is a two to three minute video following the directive, “Share Your Story” This is modeled on the videos produced by the Mabry Middle School, Mabry, Georgia, Annual Film Festival that was one of the original inspirations for this digital storytelling project. The purpose of the videos is to share with the audience something that is of personal significance to the filmmaker(s). Because the digital stories are short, usually two minutes in length, the students must be able to construct a concise story, which can still effectively convey its intended point and spur others to act in a positive way. The images must enhance the storyline and help to show, rather than tell, the story. As a culminating activity for the digital storytelling project, the students plan a “film festival” to share their videos with their families. At this final showing, the students have an opportunity to show all four projects and to explain the processes they followed to create their videos.
