A Response to “Telling Tales with Technology:

Digital Storytelling is a New Twist on the Ancient Art of the Oral Narrative”

 The article, “Telling Tales with Technology: Digital Storytelling is a New Twist on the Ancient Art of the Oral Narrative” by Judy Salpeter from Technology and Learning (February, 2005) presented the educational breakthrough of digital storytelling from the San Francisco Digital Center, now known as the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS). The article touches on the history and events behind the growth and development of CDS. Digital storytelling, in this article, focuses on students writing a story on the computer using images, sounds, graphics, and music, mixed together with the author’s voice. Judy Salpeter relates how popular technology has become in education and shares some true stories from schools that have utilized digital storytelling as part of their curriculum. One story for example, Bernajean Porter, a digital storytelling workshop instructor, comments, “It is an honor to watch paper-trained people unfold the power of their own multimedia stories. It has great implication for learning as well as putting the spirit back into our classrooms” (p. 3). The author includes such stories throughout the article to entice other teachers to consider incorporating digital storytelling.

After reading the article, my first response was if fourth graders were given the opportunity to write a three page paper on a childhood memory or creating that story through digital storytelling. There are those students who would rather write the three page, boring lifeless story, but when the imagination, creativity, and excitement is portrayed from the digital storytelling project, students will most often choose the digital storytelling. In classrooms throughout the United States, teachers are using digital storytelling as an alternative assignment to the “ancient art of oral narrative storytelling,” (p. 1). While reading the article, I was influenced by the personal stories from teachers and school administrators who witnessed true change in students from using digital storytelling. Leslie Flander, director of technology for the Scott County Schools in Georgetown, <st1:State w:st="on">Kentucky</st1:State> stated, “A special needs student who had never completed a piece of school work before completed a digital story. Another, who had always been quiet due to a speech difficulty, spoke right up in his story and was praised by the other students in the school,” (p.2). As a teacher, it would be amazing to see students open up and accomplish a task because of the technology in education with digital storytelling. Instructional technology coordinator David Jakes points out, “The technology truly adds value to the experience and extends the writing to a place it could not go without the inclusion of the different media elements,” (p. 3). Technology has clearly advanced the educational system and digital storytelling could take it to the next level and assignments all around the world would change. KOCE TV’s Hall Davidson has helped educators for years discover video and multimedia authoring in the classroom comments, “Stories definitely can teach, but they are also designed to be engaging, to pull at your heart as well as you head, and to help viewers draw conclusions about their own lives or actions,” (p. 1). For students, digital storytelling is a new approach to the traditional essay story; it unfolds the imagination from the narrative and adds a touch of life.

Digital storytelling is extremely important to K-12 teachers because it is the “new twist” to telling, reading, and writing stories. In the long run, I can see book reports, essays, and portfolios changing to digital stories in order to create a more technologically advanced classroom and curriculum. Each K-12 grade brings something unique in creating digital stories. The Center for Digital Storytelling provides the newfound skills and understanding to energize teachers and inspire their students. I am interested in having digital storytelling as part of my curriculum to become more advanced in technology, while also helping my students learn to create stories in a new way.