Digital storytelling is the idea of using various resources at our finger tips with technology to create a story. An wide array of resources could be compiled to create a digital story but almost definitely includes photos and/or videos along with text and often includes narration, music, and visual effects.
The resulting story is analogous to the 20th century's use of book reports, skits, or posters in that they are products that somehow convey a message displaying the students' grasp of the content, but also allow some creative expression. Digital storytelling transforms those methods into more appealing forms of expression for the 21st century student. Different applications and websites allow for a number of different creations including interactive slideshows, movies, and digital flipbooks. Below, please find some of the software and websites we use to create digital storytelling products.
Benefits of Digital Storytelling
- Appeal to a number of multiple intelligences and modalities
- Increase problem-solving and organizational ability
- Promote the idea of community and diversity within your classroom
- Provide a creative outlet and means of expressing knowledge of the content
- Develop the idea of students as writers and authors themselves
- Integrate different subject areas.
Educational Application
- Creative way for students to report on research
- Biographies
- Retell History
- Students Create:
- Docudramas
- Advertisements and Public Service Announcements
- Myths or Legends
- News Broadcasts
- Teachers Create:
- Advertisements for the next unit of study, novel, era in history, etc...
- Review material to end the same.
How can this help with comprehension?
Researchers have explored ways to teach comprehension strategies to children. Several core strategies were found that active, thoughtful readers use.
They...
- Make connections between what they know and the new information that they find as they read. Readers bring prior knowledge to reading, but comprehend better when thinking about connections made to text, selves and world.
- Ask questions of themselves, authors, and texts. This strategy keeps readers engaged. Asking questions helps clarify understanding.
- Draw inferences during and after reading. Inferring is taking what is known and putting it together with clues from the text to make a judgement or consider what comes next.
- Determine important from less important ideas in the text. Readers ahve to differentiate key ideas and less important ones.
- Synthesize information. This happens when readers combine new information with what they already know to form an original idea.
- Visualize and create images using all their senses to better understand what they read. Readers create visual images in their minds based on the words they read.
- Repair faulty comprehension. Sometimes readers need to stop and clarify their understanding using a variety of “fix up” strategies.
- Checking comprehension by evaluating answers to written questions can evaluate whether students have a literal understanding of the text, but true comprehension goes beyond the literal. True comprehension involves the reader’s interaction with text.
How do we teach it? Show vs. Tell: More teaching, less assigning
Using the “The Gradual Release of Responsibility” approach
- Teacher Modeling
- Includes explanation and think alouds
- Guided Practice
- Students and teacher practice together
- Students share thinking processes with each other
Independent Practice
- Students try strategy on their own and receive feedback from teacher and peers
Application in Real Reading Situations
- Students apply strategy to a new genre or format
- Students demonstrate the effective use of a strategy in more difficult text
(Information on strategies taken from Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension to Enhance Understanding by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis.)
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