Digital Storytelling #4

    During my time at a previous school I worked at, where I taught as an English teacher, I would introduce the 9th graders into the course an interactive slideshow about the history of storytelling and how it has changed overtime. At the end of the slideshow I would ask students to create their own slideshows where they told the story of who they were and things that interested them. Since it was the beginning of the year and I knew writing a traditional journal entry was not something that would interest them, I figured this was a good way to shake off those summer cobwebs to get back in the flow of reading and writing. It was nice to see the creativity from the students, some created cartoon slideshows which told the story of themselves and their lives, while others took a more traditional route and added images to slides with associated pictures.

I personally don't have much experience with digital storytelling unless we count my posts on social media......

    From the selection of multimodal compositions the two I selected were PSA's and Video Book talks. Linked are the two from the listing that I enjoyed the most.... Food Waste (PSA, This was my favorite) & Harry Potter One Minute Book Talk (Video Book Talk).... Both of these examples are great ways for students to get creative and show their personalities while discussing something their passionate about or giving a quick break down of a good book!!! 

Chisholm and Trent in their piece, Digital Storytelling in a Place-Based Composition Course, explain how digital storytelling can give students many tools that they can use to show comprehension and critical thinking toward material that extend beyond the class curriculum. When thinking of the youth of today and the ways in which they interact daily and consistently with online platforms, allowing them to compose multimodal works could be a great way to get them to dig deeper than just surface level yes and no answers or lengthy paper.

Its okay for students to use multiple ways to show proficiency and mastery of topics, as educators we should encourage students to think outside the box and take risks at creativity!!!