Digital Storytelling: How to Get Started
Using Technology in the Classroom to Capture Oral Traditions by Hope Marie Cook

Internet Sites To Get You Started

Digital Storytelling Cookbook found at

http://www.storycenter.org/cookbook.pdf

American Folklife Center

http://www.loc.gov/folklife

This site will help you with making a “life-long and potentially life-changing process of documenting, recording, presenting and preserving folklife traditions in your community.”

Lots of educational resources for the classroom and images, sounds, written accounts, and a countless number of items of cultural documentation await researchers at the Center's Archive of Folk Culture.

American Memory from the Library of Congress

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

“American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.”  This site has wonderful teaching guides with activities and lesson plans for classroom use. 

Digital History

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/

This site includes an extensive collection of reference materials to assist you in the study of American history. These reference resources include audio and visual resources like music, speeches, book-talks, E-lectures, historical images, biographical directories, chronologies, glossaries, interactive timeliness and annotated guides to history resources.

Digital Storytelling Resources for Teachers

http://www.techteachers.com/digitalstorytelling.htm

Extensive links to sample digital stories, storyboards, ideas for the curriculum and workshops.

Library of Congress Learning Page

http://memory.loc.gov/learn/start/index.html

“The Learning Page is designed to help educators use the American Memory Collections to teach history and culture. It offers tips and tricks, definitions and rationale for using primary sources, activities, discussions, lesson plans and suggestions for using the collections in classroom curriculum.”

Center for Digital Storytelling

http://www.storycenter.orgSeveral educational links about how to begin telling digital stories including a Digital Storytelling Cookbook that can be downloaded and printed in PDF format.  The Cookbook gives advice on how to create a storyboard, digitize story elements.

Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling

http://www.coe.uh.edu/digitalstorytelling

Digital Storytelling

http://electronicportfolios.com/digistory/index.html

 

Integrating Technology into the Classroom

http://www.wtvi.com/teks/ds/

This site links to several multimedia tutorials and additional sites with free website creation tools and images.

Street Side Stories-With examples of digital stories created by students

http://www.streetside.org/stories/digital-stories.htm

Tech Tales After School “Brings digital storytelling and literacy into the after school hours, helping students from elementary to high school to write stories about their lives and turn them into short movies.”

American Rhetoric (famous speeches)

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/index.htm

 

 

Using Technology in the Classroom to Capture Oral Traditions

The art of storytelling and the oral tradition has existed since ancient times.  Many cultures and religions have and still use storytelling as a means of teaching lessons to family members, and the community.   According to (Walkup, 2006) “Telling stories is one significant way we recognize meaning in our lives and our relationship with the world around us.”  Storytelling is an original teaching tool and was used long before organized education was developed.  In the ancient times storytelling was not recorded by using any type of electronic means, knowledge was passed on orally or by word of mouth and sometimes was instructional by nature. 

In a paper presented by (Cisler, 1999) he mentions the differences between primary oral cultures those being ones who don’t have a system of writing and those cultures which are dominated by writing and print and the latter’s willingness to adopt a second type of orality or means of telling their stories.  For this discussion we will embrace a new technology called digital storytelling and explore how educators can find the resources to create projects that can utilize this method of teaching and learning in the classroom setting and as a creative way of helping their students tell their stories.   According to (Cisler, 1999) “digital storytelling is a combination of traditional storytelling techniques, sometimes combined with live performance techniques and with the use of multi-media to provided sound and video to supplement the spoken word.” 

Why Should Teachers Want to Use Digital Storytelling?

According to Bernard Robin, at the University of Houston, she states in her Power Point presentation that the educational uses of digital storytelling are immeasurable.  She clearly shows that if this type of technology is used appropriately by classroom teachers its results will be effective in helping students with research skills, writing skills, organizational skills, technology skills, presentational skills, interviewing skills, interpersonal skills, problem-solving skills, and assessment skills.  She also mentions that students will learn information from digital storytelling that will influence and improve their digital, global, technology, visual, and information literacy skills.  The questions that arise around the practicality of using such technology have lead others to write about how digital storytelling can be integrated into the classroom to allow students to construct their own learning.  In an article in Library Media Connection (2003) titled, What’s Your Digital Story? the authors explain that when we integrate digital storytelling into classroom projects we also enable students to construct their own stories.  This pursuit requires students to become active participants instead of passive viewers.  They further state that when students structure in narrative stories they are more likely to remember this information and commit it to memory as it is believed that our brains are wired in narrative stories and the construction of these stories help us to better cope with conflict and give us the ability to put incongruity into neat little packages we call stories. There is also reason to believe that by producing digital stories students become more critical when viewing media such as television, computers, and video games.  They can now see how easy it can be to manipulate images and text to produce information that is less than truthful. 

According to (Barrett, 2006) she sees digital storytelling as a means of creating a reflective portfolio that ties into a new type of learning environment whereas the instruction is student centered with multi-sensory stimulation.  As students work collaboratively exchanging information in an active mode with real opportunity they develop and use critical thinking skills.  The new learning environment has application because it is authentic and the learning is not isolated or out of context.  She states that students will be able to: