Digital Storytelling

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to help my professor with a professional development workshop for teachers at a local school. The purpose of the workshop was to talk about and create a digital storytelling. Going into the workshop, I knew a little about digital storytelling, so I was not sure what to expect. 

We got to the school, and my professor began explaining to the teachers what digital storytelling was. She explained to them that it was a short story told from the first person about an experience they have had or something that relates to them personally. The purpose of digital storytelling is to encourage creative writing. The purpose of teaching the teachers about this is to show them that this is one way they can motivate their students to write creatively. 

After my professor’s presentation, we broke up into small groups. I was working with four teachers from Standard 5, which is 6th grade in the States. The first thing I asked the group was what are you thinking after what Dr. C explained. I wanted to understand their perception of digital storytelling before we moved on to generating ideas. They all had a clear picture of what it was, but mentioned that they were having a hard time coming up with ideas to tell about. 

I began to prompt them with questions like what experiences have you had, who are important people in your life, or where are places you have been that have made an impact. This began conversation between the teachers, and through this collaboration they were all able to come up with an idea to tell about. 

They, then, began to map their stories out on a story board. They were determining how they were going to express their stories. Some decided to use drawings, narratives, pictures, or videos. Today, we are going to use an App on the iPads to make their stories digital. 

After the teachers mapped out their stories, we had a few more minutes in our group to discuss. I wanted to see how they could translate this activity to their classroom without the technology because most of the teachers do not have iPads. One of the teachers began to tell the story she had been mapping out, and then at the end had a question from the story. “If you could go back to one moment in your life and done something differently, what would have done?” I thought this was a neat way to translate this to her classroom. She was going to be able to give her students an example of what she was expecting them to do through her story, and then she would prompt them to make it personal and write their own story. She said then, I would encourage them to express in whatever way they wanted. She mentioned they could act out the stories, draw pictures, or just narrate it. 

This experience was wonderful. It was really neat to work with teachers. So often, I am mostly working with students, so I really enjoyed having conversations with teachers about a strategy they can use in their classroom. Also, it was interesting to watch the teachers go through the process of the storytelling. We ask our students to do so much, and it is so helpful if you know exactly what they are experiencing and how they are feeling through the process because you yourself have experienced it. Through this process, the teachers were able to see the importances of small group discussions and prompting their students with ideas to get started. I am excited to continue this process, and watch the teacher's stories unfold!