Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling has become a powerful instructional tool for students and teachers. Digital storytelling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell a story, basically combining the art of telling stories with a variety of digital multimedia, such as images, audio and video. Digital stories bring together a mixture of graphics, text, recorded audio narration, video and music to present information on a particular topic.

There are several types of digital stories, such as personal narratives, historical documentaries and stories designed to inform or instruct on a specific concept or practice.

Here is an example of a digital story. Have a look!

 

Click here to view a digital story

There are numerous ways of using Digital Storytelling in education. Teachers can create their digital stories or have students to create their own. An engaging multimedia Digital Story might capture the students’ attention and increase their interest, and it can also be a potent tool for students if they have to create their own stories. Teachers’ digital stories may also be used to enhance lessons, facilitate discussion, and make abstract or conceptual content more understandable.

 

WHAT TECHNOLOGY CAN WE USE TO CREATE DIGITAL STORIES?

 

Not long ago producing multimedia digital content required expensive equipment and technical expertise, but now we are at a point where we can make a very compeling content creation with Smart Notebook Software, PowerPoint, Photo Story, Movie Maker, iMovie or web tools such as:

 

            

 

        

 

            

   

         

     

               

 

     

              

 

       

Click on the web pages logos and try creating your Digital Stories. All web tools have tutorials in case you get stuck.

Here are some links where you can find appropraiately free and licensed resources for your Digital Story.

    Images

http://arthist.cla.umn.edu/aict/

http://www.youraustralia.eu/

http://www.brisbio.ac.uk/

http://www.freeimages.co.uk/

http://www.freefoto.com/

http://freestockphotos.com/

http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/

http://www.imageafter.com/

http://openphoto.net/

http://www.pixelperfectdigital.com/free_stock_photos/

http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/\

http://picapp.com/publicsite/

http://fromoldbooks.org/

http://www.pics4learning.com/

http://phil.cdc.gov/

http://www.woophy.com/

http://worldart.sjsu.edu/

http://yotophoto.com/

 

 

Audio

 

ttp://www.artistserver.com/music.cfm

http://cchits.ning.com/hits/

http://www.ccmixter.org/

http://freemusicarchive.org/

http://freemusic.freeculture.org/

http://funkyremixes.com/

http://www.jamendo.com/

http://www.podsafeaudio.com/

http://www.opsound.org/opsound.html

http://www.pdinfo.com/

 

    Video

http://www.archive.org/details/movies

http://streams.wgbh.org/sandbox/

http://open-video.org/

 

Xtranormal – Text-to-movie

Click here to watch the animation

 

Xtranormal is a fantastic web 2.0 tool where you can make 3D movies for free.

Everyone watches and enjoys movies and everyone can make movies. Movie-making, short and long, online and on-screen, private and public, will be the most important communications process of the 21st century.

Xtranormal presents us a revolutionary approach to movie-making. You type something; they turn it into a movie. On the web and on the desktop.

 

You just have to pick a scene, the characters, type a script, add actions and sounds, publish and share.

Your learners can also make their own movies and share them with the rest of the class.

 

Making a movie in Dvolver

Movie

This is another great web site that allows you and your students to make your own videos.

Dvolver  is extremely user friendly. All you have to do is to select a background, a sky, a plot, characters, type in characters’ lines, choose a backgroung music, select and write a movie title and then it’s ready for you to send via email or you can also copy the embedding code and paste it to Moodle or your website, for eg. facebook.

In the class, this video can be used as a reading comprehension activity or the students can make their own videos and that would be a writing exercise.

Let us know if you use this movie maker with your group and how you used it.

Animoto

Do you want to have a fancy presentation, looking really professional?

Go to http://animoto.com, and get started: Upload the images you want to use, these can be from your own files or taken from your facebook etc…, you can also add music. Animoto will customize your images and it will create a fancy presentation.

When your animoto video is ready, you can email it, post it to youtube or your site or even download it to your computer.

It is a great tool and it will make a difference in your presentations. There are a few examples on the website, check them out.

Here is one of my 30 seconds presentation I have used with my students to introduce vocabulary.