Digital Storytelling

Digital stories are videos you make yourself about any topic you wish. For teachers, it is a fun, creative, and easy way to make the classroom more exciting and engaging. Digital storytelling can be used in virtually any subject, whether it be music and art or math and science. Students are encouraged to make their own digital stories to increase their understanding of a particular subject. Digital storytelling is definitely something every educator should know about and use often!

To help you better understand digital storytelling, here are three websites I would like you to visit:
http://www.storycenter.org/index1.html
http://www.techteachers.com/digstory/examples.htm
http://www.teachingteachers.com/

We are each going to create our own movie using Digital Storytelling! This will be such a fun project that I just know you will enjoy. The subject I want you to focus on for this movie is YOU. Give us some background on who you are. Here are some examples of questions you can answer in your video: What are some things you like to do? Do you have any special talents or hobbies? Where are some of your favorite places to go? What do you want to be when you grow up?

Here are some of the steps I would like you to take in order for your movie to be a success:
1. Create a storyboard and script
2. Gather pictures that you would like to use for your movie (from your own camera or from the Internet)
3. Find music/sounds to use in your movie
4. Decide which pictures you will use and what your audio will be for the movie
5. Open up PhotoStory 3 on the computer
6. Import the pictures
7. Add your title, the text, record your voice, include sounds and music, and create credits
8. Create appropriate transitions
Always remember to save your video while you are working on it and when you are done!!!

We will go over these steps in class. In the meantime, here is a video I would like you to watch. This is an example of a digital story made using PhotoStory.