Digital Storytelling

How do we engage learners attention? Well, I suggest telling a story. But telling a story over Centra is a lot different than watching someone in person, moving around, using visual cues and other forms of imagery / effects to help keep the listener focused, engage and entertained. So how do we keep our learners engaged in some terribly boring e-learning segments? Again, I suggest telling a story, a digital story.

So I began to look around the web for some educational uses of storytelling digitally and I was surprised at the number of higher education institutions that are developing digital storytelling for educational value. One of my favorite sites was within the University of Houston's Instructional Technology Program.

The following is from their site, http://www.coe.uh.edu/digital-storytelling/default.htm,
that I highly suggest viewing for a couple of minutes if telling stories interests you.

Digital Storytelling is a fantastic way to engage students, teachers and just about anyone else who has ever wanted to be the next Ken Burns or Steven Spielberg. There are many different definitions of "digital storytelling," but in general, all of them revolve around the idea of combining the longstanding art of telling stories with any of a variety of available multimedia tools, including graphics, audio, video animation, and Web publishing.


A great way to begin learning about Digital Storytelling is by watching a digital story. One of our favorites is The Look, a personal narrative about how an educator teaches science fiction. The story is told in a humorous and interesting manner filled with little known historical information on the subject and uses still images and video from famous science fiction stories and films integrated with historical resources.



I think this is a great blend of technology and multimedia to engage a learner in an interesting manner. This also is has roots in the traditional art of telling stories that has captivated people throughout the ages. I would like to see the use of such media being developed by some of our fine and creative students within the IIT. I bet there would be some great stories to tell!