What is digital Storytelling?
The Digital Storytelling Association defines Digital Storytelling as “the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. Throughout history, storytelling has been used to share knowledge, wisdom, and values. Stories have taken many different forms. Stories have been adapted to each successive medium that has emerged, from the circle of the campfire to the silver screen, and now the computer screen.” —Wikipedia
A Changing Narrative Paradigm
I think most of you would agree that today’s youth use computers and other visual media a lot. The actual statistics reveal some astonishing results. As many as sixty-five percent of children in the United States are already online prior to their teen years –many even as young as two years of age. The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates the current growth rate for Internet use at 2 million new users per month; the majority of which are children and teens. Today’s youth are being inundated with technologies that are allowing them to actively participate and communicate in a world of their own with a variety of new forms of media. It is most revealing to note that, while we label these advances as technology and new media, children view these new forms as neither being technological, nor new.
Alan Kay once said, technology is only considered ‘technology’ if it was invented after you were born.
The use of computers, videos, DVDs, and television are popular forms of digital media that have long become a part of education. They have been found to be effective because they combine moving pictures and audio, and have the ability to appeal to a variety of learning styles. What is different today from previous generations of technology integration is that the democratization of technology has advanced to the point that there is an ever-increasing use of digital media in leisure time activities. This ever-increasing daily use has drastically changed the way children think, learn, and how they give and receive information. Before students enter kindergarten, they become well accustomed to non-linear technologies such as CDs, DVDs, and the Internet that allow them to choose their learning paths. Students entering school today do not know of a world that does not include the Internet. In a study conducted by the Kaiser Foundation researchers reported that children ages zero to six spend an average of two hours per day using screen media which includes television, videos/DVD, computers, and video games. On the other hand, they only spend an average of 39 minutes a day reading or being read to by others. Among that same age group (0-6), 36% of children have televisions in their bedroom, 27% have a VCR/DVD player, 7% have a computer, and 3% have Internet access in their bedrooms. Studies have supported researchers’ claims that children spend an average of four thousand hours over their teenaged years in front of video or computer screens.
These changes in perceptual, cognitive, and communicative styles bring up several interesting questions with regards to the kinds of mediated instructional strategies that might motivate today’s reluctant but media-centric learners. For example, motivating reluctant readers in this new digital age can be a challenging task. There is considerable research that links motivation to the effect on the person his or her past learning experiences, one’s assessment of self-efficacy, and attitudes and perceptions. Knowing that ‘digital’ is the preferred natural language of today’s digital kids may be of some help leading the way to possible solutions to learning problems in today’s classrooms. Using the concept of teaching to one’s strengths and remediating the differences, a properly constructed multimedia tool could be a way to attract the attention of otherwise reluctant learners. Given that one agrees with those who believe that most personal experiences for today’s “games generation” are more than likely digitally mediated in one form or another, then it is not too difficult to also believe that digital mediation should have a positive affect on things like developing literacy skills and specific academic subjects.
Story and learning
Story is the one of the oldest and most elemental forms of knowing. The use of story for knowing was eclipsed in the west over the last three centuries during what is known as the modern period when a shift away from story took place to a focus on scientific inquiry. Many attribute this change to Guttenberg when story (especially oral story) as a way of knowing became considered to be an inferior or backward kind of thinking and a primitive form of entertainment fit only for children, the illiterate and the uneducated. Because of Gutenberg, oral storying became perceived as embarrassingly crude and a “devalued currency”. Initiated, perhaps, by early successes in psychotherapy and aided by the advent of newer digital media technologies, we seem to be entering a post-modern era, where story is elevating itself from an art form into becoming a radical change agent, transforming imagination into action.
For educators, this has translated into a situation in which story is enjoying a modest revival because it relates so well to constructivist ideas about teaching and learning. Educators are beginning to understand story as a way of knowing things: a “narrative epistemology”. The work of such scholars as Walter Ong, Eric Havelock, Millman Parry, Albert Lord, Jack Goody, and Ivan Illich has done much to reclaim the dynamics of story as a primary mode of communicating, thinking, knowing, and relating.
The post-modern view of story as mediated through technology was first identified over thirty years ago since Marshall McLuhan’s famous treatise on the effect the communication channel has on the interpretation of the message it carries and how it exercises some form of control on thought. It has long been known, however, that story is a powerful mechanism to affect learning. Those who study story’s effect on learning environment know that stories “effect a change in consciousness, a surrendering of defenses, and creative engagement with the imagination”. Many educators relate the use of story to Bruner’s ideas about situated cognition, where it has been shown that situating information by embedding context helps learners retain and understand information for longer periods of time.
Situating what is to be learned in context through story helps the learner select, arrange, and organize things in manageable chunks. Because story requires one to suspend his or her beliefs in order to buy into the premise, a learner is already conditioned to accept change –a necessary pre-condition to learning.
Why digital stories?
Due to the influence of new forms of digital media such as video games, today’s digital generation comes in regular contact with narrative constructs. What is unique about story in the context of digital media is that it differs greatly from the kinds of knowing communicated by traditional literature. Literature and story as mediated interpersonal interplay are very different from one another. Literature as a narrative form has been preserved as a written text in its fixed, final form. In literature there are no interpersonal contexts. Getting today’s digital kids who are used to more interactive forms of narratives to buy into the premise of a piece of written literature is a significant challenge. Educators have long believed that the effort to get their students to become absorbed into the story line of literature is well worth the effort. They quickly and rightly point out the positive effect reading literature has on developing vocabulary and imaginations. The problems of getting the students to buy into the value of reading literature have been exacerbated by the preponderance of the use of technology in their daily lives and a corresponding denigration of the value of text in general. Today’s digital kids do not like to read because they feel it is simply ‘boring’ or they have trouble visualizing the words they are reading. A constructivist would point of view, if literature is good for the imagination then it follows that interactive story in which students take an active role in learning and observing the world must be better. Further, the definition of the term literacy needs to be expanded to include developing skills in using newer forms of mediated interactions.
Increasingly, educators and teachers are beginning to find methods of instruction that include the student’s right-brained strengths into the traditional curriculum. In fact, many have begun to realize that digital media provide an easy way to teach to a student’s right brained strengths by combining digital formats with the power of interactive story as the mainstay of the curriculum. Because digital kids show an affinity for all that is digital, introducing digital forms of story makes sense. Today’s students consistently voice support for watching movies and DVD’s, and playing video games rather than reading a book, so it makes sense to base instructional strategies around the construct and narrative structures found in movies and games. By using digital video and narrative-based games, for example, students get to construct and present their stories without having to be good writers. Vocabulary and sentence structure are the mainstay of written communication. If vocabulary and syntax are a student’s weakness, then they are stumbling blocks to the successful completion of writing and reading assignments, leading to frustration and negative attribution. If, on the other hand, familiar tools are used in the beginning chances for positive outcomes are heightened. It may make more sense to teach vocabulary and syntax after narrative structures have been learned. This way, students learn that written form is only one of many ways to express thought. Narrative structure is then shown to be a basic building block for learning –a meta-learning principle. Because digital formats facilitate a shared experience in which the outcomes can be easily shown to their peers, students receive immediate feedback and are more incented to perform than any grade a teacher might provide.
Theory into Practice
The central idea of making story as the central organizing concept is to build narrative structure as a curriculum framework. This is done in three related activities: writing personal stories, learning about books through the use of book trailers, and using stories as an organizing theme in other academic classes like social studies, math, and science. Narrative is what brings structure and conceptual framework to the curriculum. Students first learn about the basic narrative building blocks like plot types, character archetypes, scenario, and environments (many of the same elements used to build narrative-based video games). Students use these building blocks to develop their own personal stories, then to compare movies to written narrative forms, and finally to serve as advanced organizers to set the scene for math and science problem solving. In a round-table environment, students are presented with the idea of story and its historical role in teaching and learning. Students participate in story circles in which they are provided motivation, cues, and insights on how stories are generated. Each student is then invited to tell a personal story about an important event that has happened in his or her life. Anticipatory activities include story-building activities like the fantastic binomial generated from books like the Grammar of Fantasy by Gianni Rodari, and board games like Pitch –It, developed by Rick Stone, a nationally known storyteller. Students are introduced to the book trailer concept via an online portal specifically built to match reluctant readers with books and then learn how to make trailers of their own.
What this all means to you
It is ok if you do not necessarily agree that using story can be a strong theoretical basis for developing a learning strategy for your classroom. My job here is not to convince you one way or the other. The fact that you do not end up being convinced will in no way affect your grade. All I want you to do is keep a open mind.. take an honest look and make up your mind. I have to tell you that not everyone buys into this. I just want you to give it a ride and see where it takes you. Once we are odne I will ask in a refleciton activity what you think, and why you have come to the conclusions you have. There are no ‘right or wrong’ answers here..
I am a believer that due to how good stories are constructed, they can become the basis to many academic subjects, not just reading. Story has been, is, and will continue to serve multiple functions in the learning process. It is a way to organize knowledge in meaningful chunks to aid recall. In oral cultures, stories and fables were used for centuries to pass on knowledge from generation. The construct of the Bible is built around moralistic narratives to teach cause and effect and consequences for one’s actions. Given that students of all ages are attracted to good stories and they provide such good teachable moments, then integrating them into multiple areas of curriculum certainly makes sense in certain circumstances.So, let’s take a look exactly what makes up a good story construct.
The Story Invention Process
This concept of the story invention process is modeled after Edward Branigan’s book: Narrative Comprehension in Film in which he explores the basic concepts of narrative theory and its relation to film–and literary–analysis. Branigan brings together theories from linguistics and cognitive science, and applies them to the screen. It is from this book that we gathered our ideas about the four elements of story creation.
The process is boiled down to four basic elements (click on the video below for a demonstration of these four elements.
- TIME and PLACE – all stories need to have a setting or background, which in a film or video is shown visually. Sometimes, like in the video, life is moving along, the characters are happy. THEN the disruption occurs. This aspect (sometimes referred to as Act 1) sets the scene. Sometimes the disruption occurs immediately, as in the first Bourne movie, but viewers are gradually reminded of the way things used to be through a series of flashbacks. In the trailer, time must pass quickly and only those moments that create the crucial ‘test’ or pose the essential conflict to the main character are shown, lest it become overly complicated and confusing. So, students reading the book need to critically analyze which of those moments they are going to show and figure out how they are going to quickly represent them in their video. Remember, a trailer is only 90 to 120 seconds long, so the background must be introduced very quickly with the essential ‘moment of change’ coming very quickly in the video.
- CAUSE & EFFECT – This is that all important moment in which the central character faces a decision… to succumb to the conflict or fight. In other words a conflict is not a conflict unless the character notices it and make some type of judgment about it. Most often, this conflict/challenge cannot be overcome unless the character goes through some type of transformation or change and that requirement may also compel the character to go against his or her natural inclinations or morals –thus, the story conflict is born. This is an important teaching moment in the story invention process and represents the key difference between introducing the elements of story hypothetically and in the abstract and teaching students how to actually CONSTRUCT stories. We have found that, once students understand this concept, they begin to learn how to read critically and actually LOOK for things in the book they are reading that they can utilize in their trailers. We teach them that a tragedy results when the conflict wins, a comedy is that story in which the character wins (i.e., overcomes the stumbling block, or moral dilemma). This is what separates a story from a heap (a list of unrelated facts) or a catalog (a list of related facts a simple chronology of events, etc.). Re-enacting this event is what differentiates a trailer from a book report or discussion about the book that is recorded on video.
- a CENTRAL CHARACTER who notices this potential and is required to make some judgment. The one thing to remember is that there is a finite number of character types. Victoria Schmidt in her book, identified only forty-five. Each one’s ‘allowable actions’ (to borrow a term from the video game industry to describe how developers program their characters) are limited to their own personality strengths/flaws, which makes for the rising action and central conflict. A story is not a story without this confrontation between life and the character’s limitations/strengths. Recall that famous line in Lennon’s song “life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans”). Again, this concept is central to understanding how stories are actually built. Students need to figure how how to quickly introduce those ‘allowable actions’ of their characters (probably within the first 30-45 seconds) in order to increase the dramatic effect within their trailers.
- because all stories need both a teller and a listener, students need to decide on how they are going to COMMUNICATE THE STORY (conflict) to their viewer. This is crucial. The story needs to be credible so that viewers will be willing to suspend their disbelief for an instance and buy into the storyline. This can be done visually, through a look, a series of metaphoric images, in a voice-over, or as a part of a dialog/monologue within a scene. Shakespeare often did this in the form of asides in which the main character actually spoke directly to the audience. In hte video below, notice the conversation in the video clip between the two characters as they were speeding away from the scene. Not only did the director present us with the conflict through the look on Bourne’s face (and change in music) as he was taking that drink of water after his jog, but he also reinforced it (just in case the audience missed it somehow) through the dialog. It was this interruption that caused a change in the daily lives of the characters. Brilliant!
Take a look at the video below. It is the opening scenes from the movie The Bourne Supremacy. The original 15 minutes has been boiled down into the most significant 4 minutes in the opening that demonstrate the four parts of story creation. Now the producer had to do two things in the opening… remind those who saw the first two movies (this is the third in a three part movie series) what happened and then introduce the story. But they do a wonderful job with this. All four elements are present in this clip. See if you can spot all four:
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Understand the the elements of ’cause and effect’ are what make this work.. there is a cause (the mysterious guy coming into town looking for Bourne), what has a effect (Bourne recognizes he and she must leave), which sets off a series of events that changes both their lives forever… this concept of cause and effect is what makes story a great tool in all the subject areas…. certainly science is all about cause ad effect, so is history and social studies .. of course literature.. math? well in itself math is another representation of the cause and effect principle.. but story is also a great way to contextualize math concepts… not sure if there are ANY academic areas that are not in essence a review of the cause and effect principles…
Digital Storytelling Links
Ok, perhaps you are still not convinced … and besides, what does all of this have to do with technology???? Glad you asked!!!!!! Take a look at some of these links below and perhaps things will become clearer (remember what we said above about teaching to your strengths etc.. and digital kids.. don’t forget.. digital kids are attracted to both story and all that is digital.. if you put both together, you have a pretty strong motivational tool set… and don’t worry we will revisit all this later on when e get to the video lessons. I have some pretty neat sites to show you that are terrific motivators…
- The Elements of Digital Storytelling – The Elements of Digital Storytelling site provides taxonomy of digital storytelling, analysis of current practices, clearinghouse of effects research, showcase of innovative story forms, and a forum for discussion.
- Adobe’s Digital Kids Club: Help Your Students Tell Their Stories – Adobe has great products that support digital media. They offer tips and lessons for using digital media in the classroom.
- Digital Storytelling Finds Its Place in the Classroom – Created by Tom Banaszewski an Educator/Multimedia Author from Maria Hastings School in Lexington, MA – This article discusses how to use digital storytelling in the classroom.
- Digital Storytelling site by Helen C. Barrett, Ph.D. – Examples of the uses of digital storytelling as well as the hardware and software that can be used are presented here.
- Digital Storytelling Resources for Educators – This site includes ideas, examples, templates, and resources that can be used for digital storytelling.
- Digitales – Bernajean shares resources and detailed steps to become a Digitales StoryKeeper. She provides examples and ways you too can learn the creative techniques of mixing of narrative voiceovers, sound, images, memorabilia, music and special effects into a personal digital stories.
Other Useful Links
- Storyboard Templates – These are blank templates that can help you get started with storyboarding.
- Flickr – a super source for photos! You can also store, search, and sort photos. You can create list and share your photos with others.
- Free Music – Here is one for audio
Do This:
The activity for this lesson combines what you learned from: 1- the Concept Map Activity from last week, 2- the Photostory/iPhoto Training for this week, and 3- this lesson on digital storytelling.
Using your Concept Map from last week as your storyboard, develop a Photostory/iPhoto video that ‘plays out’ the concepts you have identified in the Concept Map. The video should run between 2 and 3 minutes max. Make sure that your story demonstrates your understanding of the four elements of story creation as noted above. You must have a setting and time passing. You have to have a change/cause and effect, a recognition on the part of your character that he or she needs to make a change or resist it and remain the same, and then you need to communicate that realization.
This is a meStory but in actuality we can easily relate this to the classroom. In this kind of activity, you might use it for history or social studies, for example. You would be asking your students to ‘role play’. After looking up the life of a person from history, you would ask the student to create a slide show.
So, let’s say you are Benjamin Franklin. Somewhere in your life you had to make a decision because something happened to you while you were ‘busy making other plans’. The effect of that decision may have changed your life for ever.. (How for example did you decide to become active in the Revolution?) . Whatever it is make it a story with the four elements present. You will get completion points for this activity but in order to receive all of them, you have to demonstrate all four elements.
So, you are not a famous person (or maybe you are, I don’t know). I am asking for a meStory because I am not requiring you to do the research on a famous person to make this assignment easier. But don’t lose sight of what we are here for.
This time you need to post your project to the server that I identify in the Tech Ed lesson on FTP that is posted this week. We are not using Angel for this assignment. The video should be no longer that 2-3 minutes… Use the file format specified in the Tech Ed Lesson on Photostory/iPhoto.
NOTE YOU ARE TO UPLOAD THE FINALIZED FILE AND NOT THE PROJECT FILE. POINTS SUBTRACTED FOR ASSIGNMENTS POSTED TO THE WRONG FOLDER AND IN THE INCORRECT FILE FORMAT
The reason is that your videos will probably be to large for Angel and also too large for the rkenny.org site. Each has small file size limits that do not lend themselves to video files.