Digital Storytelling Reflection

Digital storytelling is a useful tool in a language arts classroom. It can be used for students to tell their own personal stories, or to respond to a text they’ve read.  Many tools exist with varying levels of complexity so students of almost any age can engage in digital storytelling.  In addition, CCSS support the use of digital storytelling in the classroom, specifically standards involving using technology to create and publish writing, creating audio recordings of stories, using multimedia components, and summarizing key points or ideas. 

In Bridging Technology and Literacy (2015), Hutchinson & Colwell discuss digital storytelling in the language arts curriculum, specifically the importance of teaching students how to create meaningful stories with appropriate tone and music that contributes to the story. They also emphasize the importance of the planning process for digital storytelling, including using tools like Felt Board and Comic Life to create a storyboard before they actually begin developing their story.

 For my digital storytelling project, I used the tool Adobe Spark. This is an online-based tool that allows users to upload their own images, audio or video, as well as utilize images and music from stock websites. The interface is very straightforward and easy to use, and output is very professional looking.  As a trade off for the simplistic interface, the capabilities are somewhat limited: users can choose from a present menu of themes and fonts, and the text/images can only be placed in certain areas on the screen. In addition, the themes dictate the style of the transition between frames, and although users can choose how long to show each frame on screen. However, I found that even with the limited capabilities, I was able to use all the different elements I wanted in my story.

 I knew when I was planning my story that I wanted to create my story around a science concept, but also make it fun and engaging. My digital story is called “A Butterfly Story: The Lifecycle of a Monarch”. For my process, I first researched monarch butterflies and the different stages in their lifecycle, so I had some good background knowledge. Then I started thinking about how to bring the concept to life with interesting characters and what challenges they might face in their lifecycle. I also looked at stock websites to see if I could find photography of the different stages in a monarch’s lifecycle that would match what I wanted for my story, but would also be scientifically accurate. I used the tool Storyboard That to create my storyboard, which I did not find nearly as user friendly as my video creation tool. I found it very clunky and confusing to use and would not use it in the classroom. Once I created my story first draft, I shared with classmates for feedback. My first draft had images and text on the screen with music in the background. My classmates suggested that I add some narration component, as it was difficult to read all of the text on the screen before the frame had passed. In my revision, I added narration, and rather than just reading the text from the screen, I made the onscreen text either dialogue or science concepts, to make it more interesting. Overall I enjoyed exploring new tools with this project and I think creating a digital story myself will help me be able to teach the method to students in the future.