Hi there!
In this blog post I will briefly inform you about digital storytelling and I will add the digital story that we created with my group mate, Baran Volkan Balkan.
What is Digital Storytelling?
Digital storytelling at its most basic core is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories; a way of combining the art of telling stories with a variety of multimedia, including graphics, audio, video, and web publishing.
As the name implies, digital stories usually contain some mixture of computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips, and/or music.
What are the major advantages of DS?
It enhances learning by encouraging students to communicate effectively
Helps students make a connection
Encourages creativity
Tells a personal narrative
Helps students retain knowledge longer
Encourages research
Fosters critical thinking skills
Encourages students to write and to work at becoming better writers
Gives students a voice
Where is it used?
Today the use of digital storytelling is being practiced in neighborhood community centers, schools, libraries and businesses, by novice technology users to those with advanced skills. In the field of education, teachers and their students, from early childhood classrooms through graduate school, are using digital storytelling in many different content areas and across a wide range of grade levels.
What are the 7 Elements of Digital Storytelling?
1. Point of View What is the main point of the story and what is the perspective of the author?
2. A Dramatic Question
A key question that keeps the viewer's attention and will be answered by the end of the story.
3. Emotional Content Serious issues that come alive in a personal and powerful way and connects the audience to the story.
4. The Gift of Your Voice
A way to personalize the story to help the audience understand the context.
5. The Power of the Soundtrack
Music or other sounds that support and embellish the story.
6. Economy
Using just enough content to tell the story without overloading the viewer.
7. Pacing The rhythm of the story and how slowly or quickly it progresses.
OUR DIGITAL STORY- The Process
Now I'd like to talk about our story, how we created and filmed it. Me and my friend, Baran (see his blog, click here), decided to team up for this project. We first brainstormed about what kind of a story we should write. Then we came up with the idea of aliens with a spaceship and little children who had no idea of wha was coming. We named the characters as Elio and Olivia (I am inspired by the characters of my favorite movie).
After we finished writing the story, -considering we were both so bad at drawing pictures- we looked for appropriate pictures for our characters. However it was too difficult to find the same cartoon with different facial expressions so we decided on "Caillou" and a girl friend of his. You can find links of the images we used below.
Once we got all the pictures we need, we cropped them and set for filming. We photographed each of their moves, recorded our voices and put them together using the Microsoft Movie Maker. It took much more longer than we anticipated- about 5-6 hours of hard work and we finally made it...
Although we tried countless times to get the perfect voice recording, we failed for like 60 times and then, feeling exhausted, used the best record we got even though we pronounced some words rather bad and we apologize for that...
Eventually we created our digital story and we are happy about it. You can watch it by clicking here! Enjoy the video and please let us know what you think!
Here are the links of the images we used:
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy our digital story as much as we do. You can leave a comment about the post!
one of my favourites :)