Digital Story Telling

Why digital story telling?.....Because we teach digital student's.
Creating a digital story enhances writing, speaking,visual, technical and personal development skills(Dyck, 2005). The list is endless as to what you could use digital sorties for and for all ages. A true story such as "Amy's Choice" presents a powerful message to teenagers about the dangers of chat rooms. "Story of Friend's" is aimed at the lower grades and teaches the value of accepting others and treating friends nicely through a puppet show.
Other ideas include poetry, narratives, history, fiction, environmental issues etc. In a grade 5 class I would like to utilise this technology to build on their creative writing skills. The task would to collaboratively work in groups to re-create a famous nursery rhyme. The characters would be the same but they would have to produce an original ending. The students would use, video, images, text, music and narration to re-tell their nursery rhymes. The presentations could then be shared with the class. This style of learning is providing them the structure to work with peers, this increases the motivation of students to learn and provide them with the skills a modern workplace demands such as planning, management and social skills (Kearsley & ,Shneiderman, 1999). I provided the topic but they have the creativity to take control of their own learning and engage in a meaningful way to produce a project. In addition to sharing the digital photo stories with the class they can also be made available in the library to show younger grades. This outside focus stresses the value of making a useful contribution for others, the sharing of an authentic project increases student motivation and satisfaction(Kearsley & ,Shneiderman, 1999).