Digital storytelling is a powerful form of personal narrative and memoir and one of my all-time favorite forms of multimedia. Students practiced composing personal narratives in their Humanities 6 class, and in Media Lab, they transformed their narratives into digital slices of life. Paramount to impactful digital storytelling is moving through the creative process, starting with examining others’ digital stories and then brainstorming and storyboarding ideas. Loads of media literacy skills are embedded in this project. After all, students cannot be savvy consumers of media if they do not understand how media is created.
Media Literacy Skills integrated into this project:
- Brainstorming – Here’s a sample graphic organizer for brainstorming with prompts
- Storyboarding – Here’s a sample storyboard
- Practice identifying 7 Elements of Digital Stories in professionally produced stories
- Compelling leads – What engages your viewing audience? Scroll down to #3 on this Scholastic post by Beth Newingham for downloadable PDFs of a variety of leads (action lead, snapshot lead, sound effect lead, question lead, flashback lead, talking lead)
- iMovie for iPad – How to use all the features of the app
- Finding and using copyright free and creative commons images and music
- Citing creative commons media
- Capturing a “slice of life,” as opposed to a complete narrative (media vs. written word)
- Power of your voice & the power of soundtrack
- Economy
- Pacing
Here are some of the students’ stories: