Digital Storytelling in Education

I chose to make a digital story that I would create as a teacher to help students understand a new concept. Using a topic I had just written about in my SME 301 (Science for Elementary Schools) class, I made my digital story about how light is needed to see color and how different colors reflect and absorb different wavelengths of light. The information presented in this video was based on a couple of the GLCEs for physical science in 3rd grade, in the categories of energy and properties of matter. Since color and light are visual properties of things we see around us, making a video definitely seems like a good tool for presenting it. VoiceThread worked out very well for me in creating the story. I was able to upload images very easily and I had no trouble figuring out the voice recorded comments. I ran into a little trouble trying to use the doodler and talk at the same time. I tended to forget what I wanted to say next (or lose my place reading off the script I created) while I was concentrating on drawing a line in the correct place on the image. The other problem I had was forgetting to switch back and forth between my two identities between pages. I would be using one identity as the last comment on one page and then I would forget to switch back when I started the first comment on the next page. It wasn't a big deal, I just had to redo a couple comments to get the identities correct with the flow of my story. I tried to be a little lighthearted with my story, creating a conversation of sorts between myself and my dog (the other identity). I'm hoping that 3rd grade students would enjoy that kind of thing.

I can see digital storytelling being a useful tool in pretty much every subject area. My story was an example of how it could be used in science, as a way to connect verbal information with a specific visual idea, which I feel is especially helpful in science. Digital stories could be used to same way to present information in social studies, such as displaying a location on a map followed by a picture of people who live in that location or important monuments. Multiple voices could be used to tell stories from history to enhance understanding of certain events. In language arts, either the teacher or students could create videos to serve as book reviews, biography reports, or to orally present poetry. I can also see uses for digital storytelling in math to present calculations or diagrams to students in ways that they can watch and listen to many times when they don't understand something. The doodler function would be useful for pointing out a specific part of a math problem, or a point of interest on a graph or geometric diagram. Videos like this could also work for presenting students' artwork or writing for themselves or parents to view or listen to. The format of a video of images with voice recordings will probably also capture students' interest much better than more traditional methods of presentation. I can see a lot of potential for digital storytelling when I am a teacher. I'm a little uncomfortable with recording my own voice and I tend to be picky about how my recordings sound, but I could probably get over that eventually. Other than that, I can definitely see digital storytelling being a useful tool.