Digital Storytelling

Ds106 is an open online course that happens throughout the year at the University of Mary Washington. Anyone around the world can join for free. The course requires the viewer to design and build an online identity and narrate your process throughout the fifteen week semester. “Given this, you will be expected to openly frame this process and interact with one another throughout the course as well as engage and interact with the world beyond as a necessary part of such a development. In many ways this course will be part storytelling workshop, part technology training, and, most importantly, part critical interrogation of the digital landscape that is ever increasingly mediating how we communicate with one another.

The course objectives are rather straightforward:

• Develop skills in using technology as a tool for networking, sharing, narrating, and creative self-expression
• Frame a digital identity wherein you become both a practitioner in and interrogator of various new modes of networking
• Critically examine the digital landscape of communication technologies as emergent narrative forms and genres.”

Digital storytelling can bring students together, encourage them, and help them communicate. Digital tools can now make it possible for students to create a story and then share it with the world. Digital stories push students to become creators in content. Students can weave together images, music, text, and voice. Digital storytelling isn’t just for older grades, but it can be used throughout any grade level. Here are 8 steps on how to create a great digital story:

• Digital story is personal
• Begins with a story or script
• Are concise
• Use readily-available source materials
• Include universal story elements
•  Involve collaboration at a variety of levels

“In order to achieve this level of greatness, students need to work through a Digital Storytelling Process.” This can be great for my students to use also outside of the classroom. They can explore other creations or create their own on the content we’re discussing. Daily Create sparks creativity, which I feel many students lose in our schools. Students can do their assignments, narrate their work, and give feed back to other students. I think this would relieve a lot of stress off of us teachers and students. We focus a lot on the standards we have to meet that our student’s creativity gets covered up and eventually there are robots sitting at the tables. I’ve never heard of The Daily Create or Digital Storytelling until this assignment, but these are tools that I would use in my classroom to spark up the creativity in my students.