Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling uses a combination of narrative, photos, sound, and video to create a short, or sometimes extended, video that depicts a life experience of an individual or even their thoughts and emotions towards an occasion. This unique way of sharing an experience is often used in a basic format by people with little experience but with digital storytelling the sky is the limit and with a simple tutorial or workshop, you can begin creating in no time. The slideshows can be persuasive, if used in a business setting to sell a pitch to colleagues, instructional or historical, if used by a teacher in a classroom, or just reflective, to share an emotional moment with friends. Specifically, when used in an educational setting, digital storytelling provides an entertaining and interactive format for an educator to present information on an array of topics to their students. The great thing is, in any one of these circumstances the resources available to incorporate into the digital stories are endless.

I feel like my career choice is a form of digital storytelling all on its own. As a news reporter, it is my job to relay a story to others and obviously the audio comes from me but pictures are used in news stories as well as footage from wherever the scene of the action may be. My field of work is very digitalized and technological and so I look at it as digital storytelling in itself and using other resources available to help aid that job. However, in the context we have been using to talk about digital storytelling where you’re creating a video to share an event, I see that as being a less common tool utilized for the branch of work I want to do.

               I found this article on digital storytelling while I was researching the topic and I found it really interesting because it provided me with a whole other way to look at digital storytelling and its positive impacts on our society. The article explains how digitally sharing a story is an excellent way to engage those students with learning disabilities who otherwise have a difficult time with writing skills. Giving these children the opportunity to create a story with pictures and videos allows them to engage themselves into the activity and because it may be easier for them then writing it out, they continue to give more to the story. This digital format can also help these students with their writing because once they have laid out their story via pictures, video, or art, and their ideas are clear, they can transcribe it using the computer. I think the concept of this article, however, can be applied to any learner because it is much more engaging to be able to tell your story this way than to write it all out on paper.