What Are Digital Storytelling Stories?

By MJ Johnston

Digital storytelling stories are stories that are created by using photographs, music, graphics and voice recordings. This is a relatively new way to express creativity and tell a story. The digital storytelling stories you create can be fiction, educational in nature or just a great way to display your own photographs. These digital storytelling stories become useful when you like to go on family trips each year and take a million pictures. You can take each trip and make it into a digital storytelling story, and look back at the wonderful time you had spending time together.

How Do You Create Digital Storytelling Stories?

There are many tools both online and off that can be used to create digital storytelling stories. A simple example would be a PowerPoint presentation that includes music and a narrative. There are several other free programs available for download on the internet and some websites where you can simply create your digital storytelling stories online.

What are the important elements of a digital storytelling stories?

As with any type of story, there are certain elements that are required to make it compelling. First you need a topic. The topic of digital storytelling stories could be about almost anything. A story that can be told in anywhere from a couple of minutes to about ten minutes at most is best. The story needs to have a definitive beginning, middle and end.

The other important elements of digital storytelling stories are the pictures, words and sounds that are used. The pictures should almost be able to tell the stories themselves and the words should give further illumination and detail. Music should be used, as it is in movies, to evoke the emotions.

Why should you create digital storytelling stories?

This is where digital storytelling stories get really fun. They can be about almost anything. Often they are used to convey a particular point of view through the use of a story. An example would be a story about global warming and the importance of reducing pollution in the air. Other times they can be used to educate. An example would be a story about proper tooth care that showed how to brush and floss properly.

Fiction stories are also a fun use of digital storytelling stories. You could use a book and the illustrations would each be a frame of the story. Sound effects and music could be added with the narrative to make the story come alive. Another option would be to have "actors" play out the scenes in your story and to take digital photographs of the action.

As mentioned above, family vacations and other fun family events such as birthdays or holidays make great topics for digital storytelling stories. This is a great way to preserve family memories and they are a lot more interesting to watch than an old fashioned slide show or 8mm home movie!

Summary

Digital Storytelling Stories are a fun way to combine traditional storytelling with modern technology in order to truly engage the viewer. Stories may be true or fiction and can employ various graphics, words and music. They are a great tool for preserving memories, educating people or just plain good entertainment.

MJ Johnston writes for a variety of websites, including Hoorray, a photo sharing site that offers the quickest and easiest way to create a digital photo album.