Digital Storytelling article

Tom Banaszewski's frank account of the challenges and rewards of Digital Storytelling reflects a passionate teacher who successfully helps students to find their voices, confidence, sense of community, and technology skills. He recounts how DST elicits student emotion, commitment, and ownership. With some teacher prompting and organization, students add substance and shape to their initial ideas. He recommends that students begin with one anchor picture (for a place project) and develop a catchy introduction and conclusion to prevent the DSTs from becoming simple slide shows. Because students are interested, they help each other peer edit and develop trust as they take risks when they share their viewpoints and creations. Banaszewski strongly recommends that teachers create a model DST: one, they learn about the technological aspects of the project and develop solutions to glitches; two, they take the first risk-taking steps for students to follow. Although he warns that the sound is the hardest part, he counters that student voice is the most important component and says that the extra effort is worth the investment. He includes tips about recording voice with the video camera (cap on) and then importing and extracting the sound (on iMovie). He emphasizes that the technology is secondary to students' learning storytelling.
Banaszewski's observations and recommendations echo my brief experiences with DST. Making a video with two other focused, responsible teachers took hours longer than we had anticipated. However, as we worked, we became friends, developed trust and respect for each other's ideas, and had fun producing a video that can be used repeatedly by a lot of teachers as a model DST book report. The effort to use DST is worth it, but the wise teacher will solicit help, organize, and gather a lot of useful tips before starting.

Banaszewski, T. (2002, Jan/Feb). Digital storytelling finds its place in the classroom. Multimedia Schools.