7 Steps to Creating a Digital Story

Tom Banaszewskitechszewski@gmail.com

techthisout.wikispaces.com/Digital+Storytelling

techszewski.blogs.com

teachstory.org

.org

7 Steps of a Digital Story

1. Writing the Script

2. Planning the Project

3. Creating Folders

4. Recording Voice Over

5. Gather, Create, and Edit Media

6. Rough Cut First then Final Cut

7. Export and Share Your Digital Story

5 Steps - 5 Stages of DS Project

1. Write a two to three minute first person story

2. Collect images to accompany the story

3. Import images into the computer

4. Record the voice over.

5. Align images with script.

Digital Literacy

“What we ought to be developing in our schools is not simply a narrow array of literacy skills limited to a restrictive range of meaning systems, but a spectrum of literacies...”

- Elliot W. Eisner writes The Kind of Schools We Need

Teach Story… or else

Students gather any and all images related to their topic.

Students cannot explain the difference between a digital story, slideshow and multimedia report.

Assessment becomes subjective when the story, visual and media skills have not been adequately taught.

Is it a Digital Story?

A little history lesson

Next Exit

You be the judge

7 Elements (see hand-out)

7 Elements (CDS model)

1. Point of view

2. Dramatic question

3. Emotional content

4. Individual voice

5. Soundtrack

6. Economy

7. Pacing

Defining Digital Storytelling

the practice of combining personal narrative with multimedia to produce a short autobiographical movie

Defining Story

“a narrative account constructed around four central themes: character, conflict, struggle, goal”

- Kendal Haven Write Right

Step 1: What’s Your Story?

“Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say,”

– Barbara Ueland If You Want to Write

Challenges of Writing the Script

Loss of storytelling culture

Weak story literacy skills

Avoiding the narrated slideshow pitfall

Traditional composition approaches

Balancing telling vs. showing

“Dancing together text, images and

audio on the screen,” – Bernajean Porter DigiTales

Many Paths Lead to a Good Story

Answer an open ended question

Concise moment of change

Note card approach

Writing into a photo

Story Spine

Story Sparks (Jay O’Callahan)

Story Core

What is the central struggle?

The dramatic question?

Story Circle

Synthesizing experience and emotions

Get the Picture of Your Story First

Virtual Portrait of a Story (VPS)

VPS for Don’t Call Me Mr. B

Don’t know anything about my last name. What are you?

Nobody in family talked about our background.

Parents died early. No chance to ask questions.

People shorten my last name to “Mr. B”

Make sure people know my full last name. Don’t answer to Mr. B

Feel good about getting message across to my students.

Find peace in maintaining link to my past thru my last name.

Storyboarding

Written Script

Not an essay

No paragraphs

1-3 sentence chunks

Try to keep to one page

Step 2: Planning the Project

Practice what you preach

Fail to plan, plan to fail

Setting realistic expectations

iMovie, Adobe, Microsoft?

Test your software, equipment, working environment

Step 3: Organizing Your Folders

Original Images

Resized Images

VO

Music

Exports

Step 4: Recording the Voice Over

Recording within iMovie

Microphones, headphones

Using Audacity

MP3 recorder

Step 5: Gather, Create, Edit Media

Start with images, hold off on video til later

BIG, engaging images

Google, Picassa, Flickr

Visual literacy

Editing Images

Magic numbers 640 x 480

Scanning

Hand drawn images

Resize images

Step 6: Rough Cut then Final Edits

Import your images

Drag and Drop

Add VO

Sync images with VO

Adjust timing of images

Add transitions, effects

Step 7: Sharing Your Digital Story

Export = compressing =

making file size smaller

CD quality

Full DV

Web version

Upload to YouTube

Will My Name Be Shouted Out

“…media production gives voice to students who

are otherwise silenced in their schools and

communities. It allows students to represent their

experiences and their communities as cultural

insiders, instead of the incessant misrepresentation

of them outside their communities.”

- Kathleen Tyner Literacy in the Digital Age