There are many websites floating around in cyberspace on the
topic of digital storytelling. At the same time there is also scholarly literature
available on this topic as well. Many of these works I surveyed agreed that
digital storytelling is best used for personal narratives, memorial stories,
educational stories, and topics related to medicine and health.
Even with all of this information at my fingertips, I had a
difficult time coming up with examples of applications for digital storytelling
in my learning or teaching environment. Since we have creative faculty I
thought a good way to use digital storytelling would be to show the faculty a
few examples and let them come up with ideas of how it might be used in their
classrooms. Simply making them aware of the concept and the tools to create a
digital story would be enough for them to get started thinking about how they
could use it to present information to their students or to receive projects
from their students in a sort of dialogue.
In the online teaching and learning world in general,
digital storytelling could be used to create a digital essay, a final project
for an experiential learning course, or to express an opinion – fodder for a
debate. For example student nurses could create a digital story of their
experiences with home health nursing including photos, care plans they have
created, and a voice over of what they learned from the experience. Following is a moving video created by a high school student in Papua New Guinea at a workshop facilitated by the Center for Digital Storytelling's Silence Speaks program. His video titled "Washed Away" chronicles his discovery of a baby aborted by a young girl. Told through this medium is difficult to watch.
For additional ideas this wiki offers some great examples of how digital storytelling has been used in the classroom. Examples are organized by content area or discipline followed by a description of the project and links to additional information or examples. This website titled "Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling" is also a useful resource for ideas on how to integrate digital stories into the classroom.
Jessica, I wonder if digital storytelling could be used s part of university teaching portfolio?
ReplyDeleteThe resources you shared are great! thanks for sharing :-)
The discipline-specific examples could be very helpful to faculty who may be wondering how digital storytelling could work in their courses. I like how you described digital storytelling as a sort of digital portfolio of what students have learned and created!
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