Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling is a combination of the traditional verbal method of storytelling and the use of multimedia tools (Torres, 2009). Students can use photos, drawings, sounds, voice and music to digitally recreate their narratives.

The process of creating a digital story incorporates a number of skills for the students involved. Not only do students need to employ their literacy skills to write the story, they are also using their technological abilities to utilise ICT's, and of course they stimulate their creative sides through the use of music and art.

Where once a upon a time, writting narratives in schools merely involved a pencil, a notepad and a childs imagination, it now gets students involved and experiences storytelling in an entirely new way. The process of developing a digital story can be closely associated with the Relate-Create-Donate process of the engagement theory (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999).

Students operate in groups to plan and organise their digital storybook, and this is similar to the Relate and Create stages of the learning engagement theory (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999), which allows students to work collaboratively. Along with this students can experience a real life example of their storybook by physically creating it through the use of photos, music and voice.

Digital storytelling can turn the sometimes mundane task of narrative writting into an exciting and interesting project!


Kearsley, G., Shneiderman, G. (1999). Engagement Theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning. Retrieved July 18, 2009, from http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm

Torres, M. A. (2009). Digital Storytelling for Educators. Retrieved Augut 21, 2009 from /www.lubbockisd.org/sfirenza/storytelling/