Digital Storytelling Reflection

Maureen McInerney
Digital Storytelling
Mike Ferichs
February 5, 2008

How Digital Storytelling impacts the “Big Picture”

A story is something you’re telling with a purpose. It is designed to inform, persuade, or entertain. According to Leslie Rule from the Digital Storytelling foundation, Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. Digital stories derive their power by weaving images, music, narrative and voice together, thereby giving deep dimension and vivid color to characters, situations, experiences, and insights. Everyone, everywhere has their own story to tell. These stories can be ones that inform, entertain and persuade their audience. With digital storytelling not longer do generations have to try to keep the oral stories that are passed down alive, we can now make these stories digital.
According to Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind, “The Future belongs to a very different kind of person with a different kind of mind-creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers.” These “right brain” qualities help make digital storytelling come alive. Their creativeness will bring the world into a whole new age of creativity and it will take the internet to a completely different level than what we have today. Stories no longer have to be told orally or left to interpretation when one looks at a picture. We will be able to make our stories digital. These stories can be save and passed from one generation to the next. One hundred years from now people will be able to watch a digital movie that was made by their great grand parent. This is great way to keep people from all over in communication with one another. Using the computer to tell a story will be easier than writing, because computers mostly use one language.
I have definitely learned a lot during the four weeks of taking Digital Storytelling in the classroom. It gave me an opportunity to use a program that I only heard of and make a two minute movie! My group made a movie about Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the new world by using Microsoft Movie Maker. We thought it would be a good idea since we teach Explorers in the New World in 4th Grade Social Studies. Looking for the audio, and pictures we wanted to use was a very interesting experience. Then we wanted to make sure that the pictures went along with the audio and that the timing was correct. It is amazing to me how long it took for us to make a two minute movie. Using this tool in the classroom is a great way to teach students in a multi-sensory way and cater to children’s different learning styles. Eventually everything that the students use will all be done digitally and there will be no more text book or worksheet used in schools.