While I no longer teach class, when I last did, it was our
TV Studio/Multimedia class. One of the
units that we worked on in that class was Digital Storytelling; a unit of which
the students ultimately had a lot of fun with and enjoyed. When I taught it, I used information solely
from the textbook for the class, but, on the Discovery Education website, I
found this video about introducing Digital Storytelling (Templates for Digital Storytelling). I could easily see myself using this in the
class should I still be teaching it. The
Prezi-created video talks about templates and what they are and then shows five different templates for Digital Storytelling – each template describing in
detail how one can use different shots to produce the following
kinds of stories:
- Five Shots
- Commercial
- News Report
- Movie Trailer
- PSA (Public Service Announcement) - they even parody the 'priceless' VISA commercials in demonstrating how to do a PSA
They take the time to tell the five different kinds of shots
that need to be incorporated in to each of the Digital Storytelling video
processes. It is fun, upbeat, has great
music to it and is a type of activity that I think would get the students much
more interested in Digital Storytelling and in fact engages them as they see
how another set of students did their version of a digital storytelling project
in a method that they can relate to. (I
suspect that the bulk of the high school students have seen the VISA
‘Priceless’ commercials on TV as they relate them to topics that they are interested
in – such as sports or the Olympics just to name a few.)
The video does a great job of showing the students live
action and the actual process of making a storytelling video. This would be much more appealing and would
grab their attention more than just reading about it in a textbook or by
listening to a lecture about Digital Storytelling; it would be a great
spring-boarding or attention-gaining activity.
It also helps address different learning styles as some students are
much more audio and video learners instead of just reading about how to do
something in a book. If I were a student
and saw the digital asset mentioned above, I would be much more inclined to
want to put together a story, especially one that is a PSA because of the fact
that I saw one in action instead of just reading about it in the book. The video even goes further to have the
students browse the Discovery Education site, look up AFI and utilize the
different videos that they have on the site that go in to extreme details about
videography and the story making process.
(These are videos that I’ve used in other Wilkes classes and I know how
much more I was able to understand the concepts that I was learning about in
those classes versus just reading from the assigned chapters in the textbooks
for the classes). The videos (both the
AFI and the Storytelling) provide a hands-on experience for the students. It presents the information in a fun manner
and shows the students that the video process is exciting and that you can
produce fun, yet very informative results.
I would also think that by utilizing the AFI videos from the
website, students would get great tutorials on how to fill out the AFI sheets
that go through how you shoot each shot for storyboarding, which is definitely
a part of the storytelling process. Some
students will learn much better if they have concrete examples of completed
storyboards in front of them to reference, hence addressing the difference in
learning styles that all students have.
The video I used for this blog, along with the other videos
from AFI and videos that I came across and viewed that were about using Movie
Maker would be a great set of tools for teachers to utilize in order to get
student interested and highly motivated in the video production process. I think that they would even be good examples
for the students to go by if they themselves were going to be producing videos
for classmates and peers to view explaining and/or introducing the storytelling
process to them.
Palmer, P. (2010). Templates for digital storytelling. Retrieved October 31, 2012 from http://mediashare.
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