Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories. As with traditional storytelling, most digital stories focus on a specific topic and contain a particular point of view. However, as the name implies, digital stories usually contain some mixture of computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips and/or music. Digital stories can vary in length, but most of the stories used in education typically last between two and ten minutes. The topics that are used in Digital Storytelling range from personal tales to the recounting of historical events, from exploring life in one's own community to the search for life in other corners of the universe, and literally, everything in between.

British photographer, educator and digital storyteller, Daniel Meadows defines digital stories as "short, personal multimedia tales told from the heart." The beauty of this form of digital expression, he maintains is that these stories can be created by people everywhere, on any subject, and shared electronically all over the world. Meadows goes on to describe digital stories as "multimedia sonnets from the people" in which "photographs discover the talkies, and the stories told assemble in the ether as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a gaggle of invisible histories which, when viewed together, tell the bigger story of our time, the story that defines who we are."

Educational Uses for Digital Storytelling
http://www.coe.uh.edu/digital-storytelling/ ...this site from the University of Houston includes an overview, tips, tricks and much more for the use of digital storytelling in the classroom. There are many free software programs around nowadays to support digital storytelling. Some of these such as Windows Moviemaker and Photostory 3 would be familiar to educators. These can be used to make films/ videos, claymations and so on from the prep classroom to year 12.
Andrew