Digital Storytelling

What is Digital Storytelling?

Digital Storytelling is a "catch-all" phrase that can describe a variety of forms of storytelling with digital tools. Stop-motion animation, video diaries, vlogging, music videos, and a multitude of other forms could constitute examples of Digital Storytelling. In addition, the types of tools that one would use to engage in Digital Storytelling varies widely in complexity, accessibility, and age suitability.

For a great introduction to Digital Storytelling, watch the video example on the right, titled "What is Digital Storytelling?"

Why is Digital Storytelling Important?

With the significant rise in social media platforms in the last 15 years, people are getting their information through video more than sources that offer text-based news. Media-rich sites like YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, and many others have been a place of growing traffic for millions of viewers. Therefore, Digital Storytelling is an important form of communication for the 21st century and it is important for us to arm our students with these skills to be effective communicators for their futures.

The video on the right, titled, "Digital Storytelling in the Classroom", does a great job of summing up the importance of learning how to communicate through digital stories.

What Tech is Involved?

There are a wide variety of apps and tools that can be used to create digital stories. The most common would be an iPad, which gives you the ability to use a wide variety of specialty apps, as well as using the built-in camera to record any needed footage.

If you don't have access to an iPad, and you are using laptops instead, one tool that is excellent for this set-up is the "OkioCam" by OkioLabs, (seen in the picture on the right), which is an external USB camera that has a variety of functions that would support digital storytelling in the classroom, including stop-motion animation, time-lapse recording, and simple video recording. Students can also record on their phones and edit in iMovie on their laptops.

Below there is an in-depth walk-through of 5 apps, including Clips, GreenScreen, Keynote, Flip-a-Clip, and Procreate, with possible advantages and disadvantages for these apps to be used as a tool for Digital Storytelling, as well as a difficulty rating scale.

Keynote

Clips

Flip-a-Clip

GreenScreen

Procreate

Keynote

What is Keynote?

Keynote is Apple's free presentation building app and is available on iOS devices, as well as MacOS. In addition to presentations, it has a variety of features that make it powerful for Digital Storytelling.

How to Use Keynote?

Although Keynote is primarily a presentation app, it has a variety of features that allow you to explore your creativity within the app. The built in transitions and object animation features allows for creative uses and effects that you can have in your presentation/animation, specifically the "magic move" feature. Using this functionality in a creative way allows for very unique results, as demonstrated in the included tweet on the right.

Can Anyone Use Keynote?

Anyone using any Apple device can use Keynote, and is made to be easy for all skill levels.

Clips

What is Clips?

Clips is a free app from Apple, that provides an easy way to start creating media on an iPad. Clips is only available on iOS devices from Apple, meaning, iPads and iPhones.

How to Use Clips?

When using Clips, users can easily record directly while in the app, or import pictures and video already saved on the device.

After recording or importing video, you can add visual effects, music, subtitles, and "posters" to your video (which are like chapter headings for video), then easily export to share with others.

Can Anyone Use Clips?

Clips is one of the easiest apps to begin to use for Digital Storytelling, and is a great app for beginners. However, it does require an iOS device to use, and is not accessible on non-iOS platforms like MacBook. Therefore, if you do not have access to an iPad or iPhone, you will need to look for an alternative to Clips for Digital Storytelling. For more info about Clips, visit the official Apple page here.

Flip a Clip

What is Flip-a-Clip?

Flip a Clip is an iOS app that can be used to create animations, similar to a digital 'flip-book'.

How to Use Flip-a-Clip?

Using Flip-a-Clip is fairly easy, but requires a few important things to understand that relate to principles of animation before you can really hit the ground running. For a great YouTube tutorial to get you started, click here.

Can Anyone Use Flip-a-Clip?

Flip-a-Clip is one of the easiest apps to begin to use for Digital Storytelling, however, some features are locked and require payment to unlock. Though, the free version of the app is still quite good.

"GreenScreen" by DoInk

What is The Doink GreenScreen App?

GreenScreen by DoInk is an available for iOS devices only, and allows users to film themselves in front of a green screen which can provides various creative effects.

How to Use The Doink GreenScreen App?

To use the GreenScreen app by DoInk, all you need is an iPad and a greenscreen. However, green paper, a green painted wall, or even green clothing would allow you to use this app in fun and unique ways. And there are ways to use this app, that doesn't even require a green screen, as seen in the example on the right.

Can Anyone Use The Doink GreenScreen App?

After paying the $5USD fee, the GreenScreen app is incredibly easy, accessible, and appropriate for all ages, especially elementary. With a wide variety of Digital Storytelling applications and limited need for supervision from teachers, it gets an Easy/Beginner difficulty rating.

Procreate

What is Procreate?

Procreate is a very popular paid app for iOS devices that highly talented animators and professional digital artists use to create impressive pieces of art or animations.

How to Use Procreate?

Procreate is used to hand draw art. The app gives you the ability to have "layers" with your art, and for anyone interested in using Procreate for animation, they would use those layers, as frames in an animation. So instead of using multiple layers to create one piece of art, like how many artists do, the layers each become a fully completed frame in an animation, with approximately 12 or 24 frames per second of animation, depending on the chosen frame rate. If a higher frame rate is the goal for the animation, it would require more individually hand drawn images to complete the animation. To learn more about animating in procreate, here are a few resources:

Procreate Beginners Series for all the basics
Procreate Lesson Ideas for inspiration
A great tutorial to get you going as an example of the helpful tutorials that can be found on YouTube

Can Anyone Use Procreate?

Since animations produced with Procreate would be fully hand drawn, (similar to old Disney movies), this would be a very challenging app to use for Digital Storytelling, and only the most experienced and passionate artists would benefit from using this app as an option for Digital Storytelling. This is why Procreate has been listed with a Challenging/Advanced difficulty rating.

What Prior Skills Or Knowledge Would You Need To Get Started?

Since Digital Storytelling is so broad, the answer to this question really depends on what your final goal is. For example, if a student/educator wanted to create a hand drawn animation with Procreate, similar to the example posted above, but they have no artistic skills, then this would be quite a challenge and a significant amount of skills would need to be developed to achieve this. However, if the goal of the student/educator was to create a simple video with an app like Clips, describing a simple topic, there would be no prerequisite skills needed and they could jump right in and easily begin to create in an app like Clips.

Therefore, Digital Storytelling is quite literally for everyone and all skill levels. With students who are more skilled having the ability to push their creations further to produce more complex digital stories, and students who have less skills can find ways they can still engage with Digital Storytelling using apps or techniques that are appropriate for their own skills and experiences.

What Are The Steps To Creating a Digital Story?

Even though there is such a large variety of types of digital stories that could be produced, the process of planning to create a digital story would likely remain the same in most cases. This process includes the following 3 production phases:

Phase 1: Planning

Like anything, a detailed plan will help you be successful. Before you begin to film or record anything, it's wise to plan out as many details as possible. This could include:

The Story
The Script
Storyboards
Scene "Blocking"
Props / Costumes
Actors
Filming Locations
Filming Schedules

Phase 2: Filming

After you have effectively planned out your story, it's time to start filming. This is where you use your script, your props, your storyboards, and any other planning materials you created to film your digital story.

Depending on how detailed and long your digital story is, it is recommended to have some kind of tracking system for your video files, and to try to think of a way to backup your raw media, just in case it gets deleted some how. For smaller projects, this is less necessary, but for larger projects, it prevents you from having to refilm anything in case any files are lost.

Phase 3: Editing

After you have finished filming, this is where you begin to edit your final video. This phase also involves finding music to match your scenes, and even finding sound effects to match your story.

For example if one scene in your digital story is a sad scene, you will want to add sad sounding music to this part of the story.

And if one scene is supposed to be in a crowded mall, but you filmed it in a building without many extras, you may want to find a background sound effect of a crowd to make it sound like your story is really taking place in a crowded mall.

What Would You Ask Students To Accomplish?

With Digital Storytelling, students would be asked to communicate an idea or story through a digital form, in most cases a video with music, various sound effects, and voice overs or acting of some sort. As described above, students should work through the 3 step process to plan, film, and edit their digital story, but not all digital stories are created equal. The process for each digital story is different, and heavily depends on the type of video the final product is intended to be. A student might design a video to share in history class, or produce a vlog to document their holiday, or create a music video for a song that they produced in music class, which all have different processes and have different indicators of success.

The following success criteria might get you started:

Did the student effectively communicate their desired message/meaning through what was being seen on screen?
Did the student effectively communicate their desired message/meaning through what was being said by actors or voice overs?
Did the student effectively communicate their desired message/meaning through what was being heard, either through the tonalities in the music used or sound effects used, etc?
Did the student use the technology (the features of the apps, editing software, etc.) to effectively communicate their message?
Did the student demonstrate the necessary skills learned with the technology for effective Digital Storytelling?

How Easy is it for All Teachers to Add Digital Storytelling Projects to Their Classroom?

With the plethora of apps and options for tools available for teachers to incorporate Digital Storytelling projects into their classroom, Digital Storytelling is possible for all teachers. If you have access to iPads, it will then be very easy, as the many powerful apps for Digital Storytelling are all iOS-based. If you don't have iPads, using iMovie, and a student's phone to film would be the next best bet.

For Absolute Beginners...

For anyone completely new to Digital Storytelling, with Clips or the DoInk Green Screen app. These are both incredibly simple apps to begin with, and are appropriate for students of all ages.

View the two tutorials on the right to get you started.

DoInk "GreenScreen" App

Clips, from Apple

For those with some experience....

If you have some basic experience with Digital Storytelling and are looking to try learn some new tools, iMovie and Stop-Motion Studio would be great additions to your tool box to begin to improve in your media creation skills. Both of these apps require an iPad and are probably acceptable for students in grades 3 and up.

View the tutorials on the right to help you get going.

Stop-Motion Studio

iMovie

For those with a lot of experience and looking for something new...

If you are fairly well experienced with creating video and the process of editing video clips, the next logical step might be something like Final Cut.

It is important to note that mastering this piece of software will require a significant investment in both time and money.

Final Cut Pro is the "pro-level" editing app provided from Apple and only available on Mac computers. You can view it in the app store here.

It would be recommended to teach this software to students in grade 9 and above, and only if they have significant experience with editing in software like iMovie.

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