multimedia storytelling assignment

The Changing Story: digital stories that participate in transforming teaching & learning

(25 reviews)

Linda Buturian, University of Minnesota

Publisher: University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing

Language: English

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Reviewed by Dolores Flamiano, Professor, Media Arts and Design, James Madison University on 5/16/22

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

The Changing Story gives a remarkably thorough overview of digital storytelling and covers the bases from project conceptualization to scaffolding to assessment to peer feedback. There is much to admire in this book, from preliminary chapters grounded in educational theory to later chapters that get into the practical nuts and bolts. There are a couple of features that I find extremely informative and helpful—at times even inspiring. Next semester, I plan to implement digital storytelling assignments in my classes. When I do, I will be turning to The Changing Story, in particular the exercises in the Appendix and the chapters on scaffolding and assessment. As a professor with a humanities background teaching in a program with a strong focus on applied skills and media technology, I often feel like a fish out of water. At the same time, I want to help students apply their digital skills to critical analysis and visual literacy development. The Changing Story appeals to me because it takes a “big picture” approach to digital storytelling. In other words, the focus is on learning through digital storytelling rather than learning to use digital tools. To me, this is an important distinction, and one that makes this book truly comprehensive.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

Very clear and accurate focus on digital storytelling from cross-disciplinary, education-based, pedagogical perspectives. I appreciate the short videos sharing the experiences of students and teachers who have used digital storytelling assignment for different purposes and in different disciplinary contexts.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The book’s dual focus on digital storytelling and climate change (a through line in many of the video examples) makes it feel highly relevant and of-the-moment, but not in a trendy or frivolous way. I also applaud the authors for paying attention to the process of digital storytelling and not espousing any specific technological tools or platforms.

Clarity rating: 4

The writing is clear, straightforward, and accessible. It might seem basic for those already conversant with digital assignments, but for someone getting started, it seems just right.

Consistency rating: 4

Uneven, in my opinion. The chapters are consistent in terms of following a format clearly described in the introduction. The student examples are somewhat inconsistent in terms of the production lengths (8 minutes feels too long) and technical quality.

Modularity rating: 4

I’m not accustomed to rating modularity, but will do my best. In terms of the ability for separate chapters to stand alone, then I think that certain chapters, notably the Appendix, could function quite effectively as independent modules.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The book is thoughtfully organized so that each chapter builds upon the previous one. The chapters flow well together.

Interface rating: 3

This was somewhat uneven, in my opinion. For example, when reading the e-book online, I found a few cases of orphan last lines or headings. In terms of the videos, I found it distracting to be taken to YouTube whenever clicking on a video interview or student example. I would prefer to have the videos embedded in the e-book rather than having to go to YouTube.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

The book was error-free as far as I could tell.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

Somewhat uneven overall. The examples of student work were somewhat diverse and inclusive. There were videos highlighting people and projects in South America and other parts of the world. On the other hand, the interviews with students and teachers did not have much diversity.

I appreciate the opportunity to read and review this book. I have been looking for a helpful primer for introducing digital storytelling into my media literacy and critical thinking classrooms, and this is the best textbook that I have seen so far. It provides a solid rationale for introducing digital storytelling as a way to enhance and enrich teaching and learning. Equally important, the authors often take a strong social responsibility and ethics perspective, which I admire and support. In this vein, I appreciate the attention to fair use when it comes to using images and music, as I think this is an area where students will need more guidance as digital storytelling becomes more pervasive in our educational landscape, which I think it will.

Reviewed by Vicki Pitstick, Director, New Student & Family Programs, Radford University on 1/7/22

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

As a professional who has used digital stories in many ways and a certified Digital Story Facilitator through The Storycenter, I felt this book did a great job of explaining what digital stories are and different ways they can be utilized. The numerous examples of digital stories and students' reflections on their digital stories were wonderful, and the index/glossary was very complete with explanations and sample assignments. The one thing I wished the author would have discussed was the use of story circles when creating digital stories. This is a very powerful aspect of the process of digital storytelling that can elevate student learning and teach empathy, and although it takes time, that all professors may not have in the classroom, I do think it is a part of the process that could have been explained for those who might have the time to incorporate it into their teaching.

The author did an excellent job of providing clear and accurate explanations. Her viewpoints did not come off as bias, and she was able to portray a sense of flexibility as well as provide options for teaching a topic in a different way in her writing.

As technology becomes more and more a part of our world, providing resources to teachers about ways it can be utilized in the classroom is crucial. This is especially true if we want to keep our students engaged as much as possible. Additional examples and updates could easily be added to this textbook.

Clarity rating: 5

The numerous examples, digital stories, and exercises made the text an easy and enjoyable read.

Consistency rating: 5

The author is consistent throughout the book with her terminology and framework. She explained how each chapter would be set up and followed the format she described. Her use of backward design as a framework for the book illustrated the value of this pedagogy.

The text is written more of an instruction for teachers on how to teach using digital stories. There are aspects that could be pulled out for students, but it is mainly to help teachers with this pedagogical strategy.

The book was easy to read and flowed well.

Interface rating: 4

Not all links worked for me, but this may be a result of my own computer.

The book was very well-written and easy to read.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

The beauty of digital storytelling is that it is a great tool to help people educate others about and celebrate their cultures. I did not find anything offensive about the text.

I believe the use of digital storytelling is very powerful and enjoy incorporating them into courses and other activities when appropriate. I appreciate that this book has added to my repertoire of exercises, examples, and ways to assess digital stories. I also appreciated the authors vulnerability and honesty about her own process as she continues to incorporate digital storytelling into her teaching, Well done!

Reviewed by Elif Guler, Dr./Associate Professor/Professional Writing Coordinator, Longwood University on 8/17/21

This book presents a comprehensive discussion of digital storytelling from its definition to examples of students’ digital stories to related scholarly research as well as tools (e.g., assignments and exercises) and other resources (links to instructional videos) for teachers to easily integrate "digital storytelling" into their curricula. However, some of the links provided for sample students’ projects no longer work (perhaps because those students chose to make the videos private, etc).

Content Accuracy rating: 4

The content is accurate. The only issue (error) is with the broken links that no longer work (there are several of those).

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The relevance is a challenging aspect with this kind of a text whose topic (digital storytelling) has something to do with changing technologies. The text does a good job of overcoming this challenge, Much of the discussion provides timeless guidance on composing digital works that would could be easily applied through different technologies -- even if those technologies were to change in the future. Still, the text might need updating every five years or so (which is indicated even by the sample links that can go obsolete in a short period of time).

The author presents the content in a very accessible, clear prose. The text flows very well and makes the reader want to continue reading. The text can be understood by any teacher at any level without knowledge of specific terminology. Any terminology used is defined and explained.

The text uses relevant terminology consistently. The chapters are also consistent within themselves in terms of their purposes. For example, chapters 1 and 2 provide a more theoretical discussion, while chapters 3 and 4 also provide practical models and procedural frameworks.

Modularity rating: 5

The text has been clearly divided into chapters and different sections that can easily be selected and assigned for students to read.

This text is clearly organized around definitions and discussions of theory on digital storytelling, practical tools for creating digital stories, specific examples, exercises, assessment devices.

The interface can get problematic at times; for example, it takes a while to get out of an example page and return to the corresponding chapter, sometimes. The reader can find themselves bumped back to the beginning of the book or the end of the book, etc. Also, some of the lines in some of the chapter pages seem to get cut off, so the reader might need to play with the browser window size to make all of the text visible.

The book seems to be edited well for grammatical correction.

The text presents a rhetorically conscious approach to culture and invites instructors and students to critical thinking thorough the exercises included in the chapters. Highly interesting sample works such as the "classroom as mandala" provides for meaningfully diverse content.

I'm definitely planning to integrate some of the assignments and exercises from this book into my digital writing course.

Reviewed by Sharon Head, Assistant Professor, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts on 6/3/20

This text is a comprehensive, concise, and highly readable introduction to the use of digital storytelling as a learning tool for both instructors and students. The author provides a solid theoretical background, exercises to use with students, and many powerful examples of the ways that her students and colleagues have used and learned from the process of digital storytelling.

The author provides content that is accurate and unbiased. Specific attention seemed to be paid to providing examples of digital storytelling that reflected a variety of cultural perspectives/voices.

Because the author refrains from discussion of any specific technology, this text will be "current" for years to come. There is a sense of timelessness about this content in the best possible sense.

This is a well-written and very readable text. I think that it could be easily used by instructors not just at the university level but in K-12 settings as well.

The author very clearly outlines her approach to the organization of chapters at the beginning of the book and follows that structure throughout. There is good consistency in tone. Use of short, meaningful quotes at the beginning of each chapter helps to draw the reader "in."

Text is arranged in an very visually appealing way. Lots of white space and headings/sub-headings that help the reader to see where they are and what lies ahead. No student should be able to make a complaint of TMDR (too much, didn't read) about any of the chapters or the book as a whole.

This text has a very clear organizational structure that progresses from definitions, to types/uses of digital stories, to very practical exercises, examples, and assessment tools.

Text is free of major interface issues; there were however issues with accessing the assessment rubrics.

No grammatical errors; well-edited.

Text is culturally sensitive and includes examples of digital stories from students and instructors who have a variety of cultural and/or experiential backgrounds.

I will plan to use this text as a resource for pre- and in-service K-12 teachers.

Reviewed by Carrie Oeding, Assistant Professor, Bridgewater State University on 6/1/20

I really like what the book covers and how it breaks down the steps to integrating digital storytelling assignments in your classroom. It's incredibly clear and immediately useful. In the "Types of Digital Storytelling" I would like to see a reference to additionally using the assignment genre to create arguments with digital storytelling. Right now the emphasis is on informing, explaining concepts, reflecting, and teaching others. A lot of students think research and writing means just reporting. Informing and explaining doesn't imply creating an argument. To specifically emphasize how to create an argument with your research or an argument using a concept you have studied, is a different, important objective for classrooms. I also would like to see a researched personal narrative assignment included in the "types." The reflecting section in Chapter 2 is geared toward students reflecting on their work. But to emphasize how a digital storytelling assignment could require research and personal narrative to create an interesting hybrid narrative would be useful for a lot of courses.

The book also does not break down specific questions peers can ask each other in the peer review process. This is a constant step of consideration and revision for faculty when scaffolding major assignments.

The book is steeped in useful experience.

The strength of this book is that its breakdown of these assignments are really flexible for almost any course and major. The guidance is still open enough to inspire you to consider what your current goals and themes are for the course, making the text very relevant and adaptable.

Easy to read in a useful way. I can get through the text quickly, find it all useful and know I can return to it when I want to build my own assignments or cite in pedagogy research. I would have liked to see, though, a section on teaching editing of video and photo essays. This seems like a key step in the learning process.

The clarity of the book is also stemming from its consistency. The consistent referral to the practice of a participatory pedagogy through the use of digital storytelling helped to keep the objectives in the forefront. The value of participation was present in every aspect of this book--from brainstorming to evaluation.

I like the links to the exercises within the textbook. You can keep following this scaffolding of exercises and still return to where you left of in the chapter.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The organization makes it easy to jump around as well as read chronologically. I just wasn't 100% sound on the position of Chapter 5. I understand that loading this information in the preface would lose readers, but it read as coming in a little too late into the text.

Interface rating: 5

Easy to click and return throughout the book.

Very clear.

It's incredibly relevant to use with inclusive pedagogy. The text emphasizes the need for rhetorical analysis of images, a critical cultural tool, by organically integrating such analysis into the scaffolding of the exercises.

Very useful! A good primer for faculty who want to use digital narratives or multi-modal assignments in their classrooms. The textbook shows how anyone can adapt these assignments.

Reviewed by Catron Booker, Adjunct Faculty/Radio-TV-Film, East Tennessee State University on 4/17/20

The text is very accessible in terms of being easily readable for educators from a wide variety of backgrounds. The textbook seems to be more of an overview of digital media for a course in the humanities, American Studies, Environmental Studies, etc. that is interested in using digital media as an additional tool for research and/or for using narrative strategies to explore various topics that might other just be driven by data based analysis. The exercises located in the Appendix are very useful in terms of understanding how to integrate this approach into a curriculum. Nevertheless, I think it would be useful to provide examples of a completed (portfolio based) project that shows a process based approach in which a range of digital strategies are used to explore one topic such as water. I think this is what Chapter 6 could have displayed especially since it was rather brief. Chapter 4 is exceptional for offering concrete instruction on assessment strategies and the challenging nature of evaluating digital projects with comprehensive rubrics included.

High accuracy and error-free readability.

This textbook feels mostly up to date as of this reading, but the challenge with digital media is remaining up to date in a highly evolving digital landscape. The relevance of this book lives in the teaching tools it provides instructors already using digital media and/or wanting to acquire a solid pedagogical foundation with concrete project based results. In this respect, the content is incredibly useful. An Appendix that not only includes the exercises but also lists key terms would also be helpful for quick and easy reference of certain topics, terms, concepts, etc.

Exceptional clarity and highly engaging without technical jargon that can be daunting for those unfamiliar with the field.

Very consistent and highly useful in terms of constant referencing of core concepts.

There is a solid balance between visual examples and the text. I would have liked to see a wider variety of digital story examples other than video including, but not limited to, graphic based projects, art projects, sound based work, etc within each module.

The chapters easily build upon each other. It is definitely an invaluable teaching reference because of its organizational flow such that one would want to return to it again and again.

Many of the links did not easily open for me in iBooks to watch online. This is an important functionality issue that needs to be resolved and may be more an issue with iBooks than other software. One suggestion is to have the links all clearly listed in the Appendix and/or on a companion website which is what I eventually found via my own navigation.

Excellent grammatical quality.

I would have liked to see more racial/ethnic, cultural, economic and linguistic diversity from the student and faculty stories and interviews included.

Excellent textbook for digital media educators. Also, a more nuts and bolts chapter on the mechanics of editing would have proven useful. A chapter with references to open source editing software is a suggestion. And finally, while Chapter 5 is valid regarding the environmental and human impact of technology consumption, the chapter was not useful for teaching in practice. This chapter could have been more impactful by considering 1)How can students incorporate this awareness into their projects and/or lives? 2)How can one maximize the functionality of technology and/or take on a DIY approach in order to minimize the environmental impact 3) How can this challenge actually become a digital media story in and of itself?

Reviewed by Qazi Arka Rahman, GTA, West Virginia University on 3/26/20

The book does a good job of detailing the steps of digital storytelling. I have particularly found the organizational structures of the chapters helpful. The way of utilizing quotes, content, student work, faculty interviews, and footnotes does a good job in scaffolding concepts and cases that is beneficial for comprehending the entire process. The chapters themselves are pretty straightforward and provide enough cases to understand the challenges of such a venture in the real world.

The text seems accurate and relatively free of bias. The arguments are based on case examples and that is always a good strategy.

Given the time and its techno-centric focus, I think this is a very relevant book. Be in introductory composition courses or graduate level seminars, it cannot be denied that the demand for incorporating tech into teaching is increasing. The book addresses a timely issue.

The prose of the book is clear and jargon-free. It's a good strategy for a book of its kind. There are little in here that might seem difficult due to the language that has been used.

The individual chapters are very well organized and that helps the overall book to be consistent and coherent.

It seems it will not be much difficult to reorganize the book to fit a class. The chapters are subdivided into different segments and that is helpful.

The strength of this book is its organization. The chapters are divided into segments that slowly builds up the process for comprehension. The usage of faculty interviews and student works also help to understand the issues that might come for each segment.

The online reading interface is smooth enough. Although, I did face some issues while turning pages. On a few occasions, I have been taken to the first page while going through the book.

I have found no significant issues with grammar in this text.

It seems the text actively tried to be inclusive, which is a good thing. It also pulls from a wide range of disciplines.

The text is easy to read, well organized, and addresses an issue that is very relevant for the current times. I am looking forward to incorporating it for one of my future classes.

Reviewed by Mara Pierce, Assistant Professor of Art Education, Montana State University - Billings on 1/15/20

The text is wonderfully comprehensive. The work is inclusive of example assignments, sample student outcomes, and methods of curricular incorporation. I appreciate the focus on participatory culture and its inclusion as a pathway to community... read more

The author atypically includes a clear layout in the beginning that informs the reader of how they will encounter the content, which is beneficial to be able to identify sections most relevant to the immediate reader.

As is consistent with the topic of digital storytelling, the author also includes narratives of those who have participated in the process of digital storytelling learning. This creates a deeper connection for more audiences.

There needs to be much more information on the Fair Use and Copyright guidelines. To do so would inform students about artists’ rights and the work they put into their pieces, including films, the next iteration of digital storytelling.

Relevance, including appropriateness for educational level or course level - Comments Interestingly, this text is more relevant to instructors than teachers. However, as a professor of teacher education, it is relevant to my pre-service or in-service K-12 teachers who plan to teach digital media.

As an artist and teacher, I find immediate relevancy.

Text is clear and utilizes at-level appropriate vocabulary. Style is conversational, but informative.

Text is consistent from beginning to end.

The chapters depend on one another, but are linked accordingly. Ideally, when one piece of information in a latter chapter references an earlier one, it is cited and informs the reader where to find the previous information.

The chapter content scaffolds well beginning with a definition of the topic through methods of pedagogical incorporation to student assessment.

The interface is excellent. All links I attempted were active and footnote numbers have immediate links, which I also found impressive.

There were no discernable grammatical mistakes that interrupted reader flow.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

The text speaks well to those engaged within a culture of research. There is information that sheds light on acts that are relevant to conducting research appropriately. What cultural aspect I would like to see more of is the connection of digital storytelling to various global cultures that use narrative as a way to continue traditions. Including those points of learning creates a dynamic that takes the concept of personal storytelling into a much large realm. I appreciate the inclusion of storyboarding as part of the storytelling culture. A connection to filmmaking is present through the link to an external site about filmmaking. However, it is not a primary source, which juxtaposes some of the content regarding the importance of first person resources. As far as references to cultures beyond the mainstream dominant, there is none. The lack of non-privileged cultural perspectives is shortcoming, especially with today’s diverse student populations.

The text is appropriate for a group of teacher educators, but seems to be more along the lines of a project guide than a full semester textbook.

Reviewed by Molly Bruce Patterson, Assistant Professor, Digital Archivist & Special Collections Librarian, Rhode Island College on 12/2/19

In The Changing Story Linda Buturian intentionally maintains a platform-neutral approach in her exploration of digital storytelling; she provides a pedagogical framework that can inform digital storytelling assignments across platforms and formats. In that sense, The Changing Story is comprehensive. However, aside from one teacher reflection that briefly discusses map-based projects, the examples and exercises offered in the text are almost entirely linear video narratives. These examples are drawn mostly from faculty at the University of Minnesota, who seem to share a similar approach to employing digital stories in the classroom. In that sense, the scope of the text is somewhat limited, but I don’t think this detracts from Buturian’s overarching goal to inspire and offer guidance to teachers interested in digital storytelling.

The content in The Changing Story is accurate and well researched.

Although digital tools and platforms are constantly evolving, for the most part The Changing Story will remain relevant because Linda Buturian’s exploration of digital stories is platform-neutral. The links to examples of student work will probably need to be updated over time, but as long as digital media is abundant in society, the core text of The Changing Story will offer helpful guidance on how to employ it in curricular design. However, readers will have to turn to other resources to find more specific information about technology and platforms for digital storytelling.

Linda Buturian’s writing is clear and she defines most technical or specialized terminology used in The Changing Story. However, because Buturian’s intended audience is teachers, there is an underlying expectation that readers have some basic experience and understanding of curricular design.

The Changing Story is informed by a cohesive pedagogical framework that emphasizes instructional scaffolding techniques. This underlying structure ensures that the text is internally consistent as it lays out the curricular building blocks needed to support students as they learn to communicate effectively through digital media.

The Changing Story is a guide for teachers interested in using digital storytelling in their classrooms. Because instructors are the audience, the text isn’t designed for direct use in the classroom, and the main chapters not modular in design. Each chapter builds off what preceded it, so it would be important for a teacher to read through most of the text in order to understand how to effectively incorporate digital stories into curricular design. Unlike the main body of the text, the appendix is more modular and provides many examples of exercises that a teacher might pick and choose from to use in the classroom.

The Changing Story is very well organized. The overall structure follows a logical order that first explains what a digital story is, and then explores different kinds of digital stories, how to prepare students with scaffolding exercises, and how to assess and evaluate digital stories. Each chapter concludes with links to examples of student work and a video of teacher reflections.

I encountered some issues with the interface, probably because I don’t normally read eBooks so I was using a free app on my phone. The main problem was the display of block quotes, which looked very nice in the online version of the text but did not render properly in the epub version. When displayed on my phone there were no quotation marks or any other formatting to distinguish quoted text.

I did not notice any grammatical errors in The Changing Story.

The Changing Story is very inclusive in its approach to digital storytelling. “Developing a culturally-inclusive lens for visual knowledge” is a stated goal of Linda Buturian’s scaffolding assignments, and she emphasizes the power of digital storytelling to foster intercultural knowledge. Many examples of digital stories in the text show students sharing diverse cultural experiences through their assignments. Not only is the text of The Changing Story culturally sensitive, but the author also demonstrates how digital stories can support culturally inclusive practices in the classroom.

Reviewed by Tracey Burrell, Director of Clinical Experiences, LSUS on 4/13/19, updated 5/6/19

The text is organized in such a way that it addresses the what, when, where, why, and how of digital storytelling. Content is supported by several student examples and teacher reflection. read more

The text is organized in such a way that it addresses the what, when, where, why, and how of digital storytelling. Content is supported by several student examples and teacher reflection.

The author infuses personal experiences with academic research to deliver a pretty accurate assessment of the power of multimedia as a learning tool.

This resource will be easy to update. The author does not mention specific names of multimedia programs, but focuses on the skills needed to develop a quality product.

Very clear and easy to follow.

Terminology was consistent.

The flow of the chapters supported student learning and teacher/instructor implementation.

Chapters are well-organized. The structure is consistent from chapter to chapter. The author uses various approaches to connect with different audiences (i.e., quotes, student examples embedded in chapter, teacher reflection at the end of each chapters).

Links were live. There were no navigation problems moving from text to video samples.

There were no grammatical errors.

There could have been more of a balance of representation, as it relates to student examples. Nevertheless, student examples that were included were a nice addition.

Reviewed by Candace Schlein, Associate Professor, University of Missouri - Kansas City on 12/8/18

A real strength of this book is how it provides definitions of different types, purposes, and scopes of digital story assignments. Furthermore, the author makes the most of the digital platform of this ebook by including a great number of samples of digital stories. Reviewing actual completed digital stories is extremely useful for breathing life into some of the concepts that are highlighted within the text. I also appreciated that the samples represented a number of disciplines. The text further does an outstanding job of including discussion of major considerations to take into account regarding assessing digital stories. Samples of rubrics and descriptions of assessments are also provided. The author encourages the use of backward design in shaping digital story assignments in terms of considering the student learning objectives for digital storytelling in the classroom. For this reason, the rubrics might be positioned earlier in the text. Building on the assessment focus of the book would be helpful. For example, some samples of student attitudes toward assessments appear within the assessment discussion. Including students in the assessment discussion from the outset of the assignment would be useful as well.

This book is well-researched and well-written.

The text provides information in concise chapters so that all pertinent information on digital stories is included in the book. However, the use of digital/ media samples to support components of the book really go a long way toward ensuring that the content is up to date. I would imagine that over time, as digital tools expand and media literacy in the college classrooms also develops, there would be a need to regularly update these samples.

The text is written in a very accessible manner. All key definitions are explained cogently. The actual samples further help to explain different concepts that are discussed. This is not a jargon-heavy text, and sections of it might be assigned to students who are working toward developing their own digital story assignment.

This book was carefully prepared and clearly organized.

This text includes several brief chapters. These chapters can be easily assigned throughout a semester to students. Alternatively, an instructor might be able to focus on portions of chapters within lessons and showcase some examples to students as a basis for whole class or small group discussions. Samples of discrete digital narratives may also be assigned to students for critical discussion about digital assignments and rubric samples might also be assigned to students as a basis for their own work to develop an assignment and rubric surrounding digital storytelling in class.

The text begins with definitions, builds toward distinguishing types of digital stories, and leads to assessments. In this way, the book follows a sound pedagogical logic to support scaffolding knowledge growth and pragmatic skills in the area of digital stories.

On a few occasions I faced some challenges with the interface after opening a sample. During each of these instances, I found it easiest to search for the book again and open it. The book then opened where I wanted to go next.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

The text is grammatically sound overall.

The text is culturally inclusive. It also includes perspectives from a broad range of disciplines.

I think that this text can be useful for a variety of different purposes. I was pleasantly surprised with the professional quality of the text. It was easy to read, and I can see multiple ways that I can incorporate it into my own teaching, as a supplementary textbook or as a material to support a lesson, students' digital story efforts, or a student assignment focused on teaching through technology tools or on media literacy.

Reviewed by Ranae Hanson, Instructor, Minneapolis Community and Technical College on 5/21/18

The book gives a thorough guide to developing digital story assignments and teaching this method of researching and presenting a topic. The author offers a wide range of examples and methods for adapting the material to varying academic... read more

However, as a newcomer to digital story-making, I feel a need for more specifics about how, exactly, to make a digital story. I note the suggestion by Rebecca Goodrich, in an earlier review, that the “rudiments of importing assets and arranging them on a timeline” as well as suggestions for simple editing platforms be included in the book. When, in the Exercise 2.2 assignment, the author says that she works with a technical assistant to help students edit photos, I feel unclear how I could do this at a college where I will not have access to a technical assistant and do not have much experience editing visual material myself.

The book would be more useful to me if it gave more suggestions about how to begin teaching digital story-making in a small way, incorporating additional aspects as the instructor gains more expertise.

This book is clearly up-to-date. Because technology changes so often, the author has incorporated suggestions for how instructors can, and must, choose some new methods to learn while rejecting others. She also addresses honestly the issue of student frequently knowing more about a particular technology than the instructor does and highlights the benefits of student-to-student sharing of knowledge.

The digital format of the book makes revision for timeliness easier.

The book moves well into the future. Unless technology becomes harder to access, the relevance of this teaching technique will probably increase.

In addition, the focus on water will become increasingly relevant. Students will find the material presented engaging and essential. Students at my college will appreciate the many examples that are near to home.

The book is clear and specific. As I noted above, it is unclear only about how some editing and video composition tasks are done. Those may need further training and additional instruction. For example, samples of students’ story-boards, especially the early hand-drawn ones that the author says she had her students begin with, would be quite useful for instructors new to video production.

The text is consistent. It’s purpose is to introduce educators to digital story-telling pedagogy; it remains true to that task.

This text is written for the instructor rather than as a text for student use. Each chapter, except for Chapter Five, builds on those before it and follows a similar, welcoming organizational pattern. The assignment explanations in the appendix are useful for course development. The many excellent examples of student- and faculty-produced digital stories throughout the text would be great for students to explore; therefore, I would appreciate a “For Students” segment in the text, but students are not part of the audience the author envisioned. The challenge of adapting the text for student use is left to the instructor.

The text links from examples back to the explanatory material. It shows how digital story-telling works as well as explaining the craft. Chapter Five in out of the flow of the other chapters. It addresses ethical issues related to scarcity of resources and global injustice involved in the production of our devices and is, I believe, an essential addition to the text.

The textbook links cleanly with all videos included. Links to assignment prompts and back to the text chapters functioned smoothly.

The grammar of the text is, overall, good. Some editing of repetition, as at the beginning of Chapter Three when a quotation is repeated in full, would be helpful. I stumbled over “I trust you are as busy as me.” My old-school education would ask that to be “as I” and I still prefer that, but I admit that the grammar the author chooses here fits what students will understand.

The cultural relevance of the text is excellent. The author immediately addresses important cultural concerns—resource depletion, varying access to knowledge and experience, and the need for collaboration to overcome these challenges. As an instructor at a college that does not have access to the many technological experts who (according to some of the teacher testimonials included in the video clips) are available to come into the U of M classrooms to help students with visual and sound editing, I am aware of further injustice and begin to feel the deprivation my students may suffer because of uneven allocation of expertise as well as of resources. The text challenges me to expand my skills in order to try to reduce these digital and skill-set divides.

Reviewed by Julie Adams, Academic Skills Tutor: Digital Impact, Staffordshire University, UK on 2/1/18

This book is an excellent, quick-start guide for ways to incorporate digital storytelling into curriculum. It is aimed at teaching staff who wish to make use of digital storytelling as a new form of student assessment, but also to enhance their own teaching, although the emphasis is on the former. It is aimed at those new to the subject, but I think also has relevance to those with some experience.

Although not overly scholarly in tone, it does make some reference to learning theory and pedagogical practice, although these are not detailed. The author clearly sets the context for a need to change educational approaches given the changes in students’ digital lives outside education to be collaborative and participatory in their use of digital technology. Digital storytelling may be particularly beneficial to those students who may not excel at normal written assignments.

The book is mainly a ‘how-to’ guide which provides useful examples, assignments and assessment approaches, with plentiful examples from the author’s own practice. I liked how the author shares examples of her own experience and journey to being more engaged with using digital technology and multi-media within the classroom. The examples of student’s work and the videos of them explaining their approaches, and the teaching staff reflections I found especially useful.

One addition could be an appendix with links to online resources on video/audio editing tools - especially free ones. Those new to the area of digital storytelling may not have much experience in collecting and putting together the digital assets needed to create their story, so pointers to further guidance on this would be reassuring. This would be helpful to staff who want to create their own story, and help them to advice students.

The table of contents is helpful, but the use of subheadings within this would be beneficial. There is no index, but I am not sure this is essential – I used the search facility within the e-book when I wanted to go back and find a particular example.

The text is comprehensive in describing different types of digital storytelling. Linda is enthusiastic in her advocacy of digital storytelling, and explains the processes clearly. I found the text to be accurate with one small exception. She referred to royalty free music in Chapter 3, although does then mention Creative Commons licenses in the same sentence. Royalty free resources are not completely free, but normally involve an initial fee, although subsequent uses of the material are free.

The book is very relevant to the current educational climate. Students need to develop their digital capabilities for working and living in the digital world and digital stories are one way that they can do this. The examples of videos could be easily updated as required to keep the text more current and fresh.

I found the text clear and consistent and easy to understand. There is not too much use of jargon.

The layout, language and content seem consistent throughout the book. Chapters open with a quote giving a taste of the material covered in that chapter.

Being aimed at educators rather than students, consideration of allocating chapters for reading is not relevant. The book is easy to read and the chapters could be read separately.

Most of the book was well organised and flowed well. I would suggest that one improvement would be to include a list of all references at the end of each chapter, or the end of the book. This would make it easier to follow these up when you wanted rather than having to go back and locate the relevant link. You don’t always want to link out of a chapter while reading it.

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are very well organised and flow logically from one to another building up the readers understanding of what digital stories are, types of these and how t assess them. Chapter 5 does not sit quite so well in the flow of the book. It covers an important issue of the environmental impact of technology, but could be the final chapter as food for thought.

Chapter 6 has good examples comparing a traditional essay with a digital story and helps to emphasise the difference digital stories can make.

The appendix is very useful to pull all of the exercises together with links back to the relevant chapters.

I tried the book in both ePub format on an iPad and in a web browser. The book has a clear layout and is very easy to read. I found that the interface on the iPad worked better, when following the links to other resources. On the web version I did struggle to get back to the book after following the links.

I did not notice any grammatical errors

To me this book has great cultural relevance and is inclusive. I think that the use of digital stories can make it easier for students to being their own cultural and lived experience to their assignments and are an excellent way for them to share these with others in a way that a traditional written assignment might not. Some of examples that Linda gives are from her situation in Minnesota, which those reading the book might not share - certainly it is not something I as a reader in the UK am familiar with! - but this does not matter as I can see how this could be adapted to other situations. Linda also makes a good case for how the use of stories can be a way to break down barriers.

This book provides a good practical guide for those new to digital storytelling, and would like to use this within the classroom and who want to introduce more creative and inclusive assignments for their students.

It would also be a useful book for trainee teachers who want to adopt new approaches.

Reviewed by Carolyn Parker, Director, Graduate Teacher Education, American University on 2/1/18

As other reviewers have pointed out, the audience of this textbook is educators, not students. This is mostly accurate. However, within the realm of teacher education, parts of the book, such as chapter three, could be used with students to help guide individual assignments, and in my case, introduce K-12 teachers on how to use digital storytelling with students. The book’s appendix provides many examples of assignments along with ideas and insights into how to develop these assignments. The book also provides a plethora of examples on youtube. The book does not include an index or a glossary.

The content seems accurate and I did not find any errors. The author’s writing and method of presentation is straightforward. Buturian supports her writing with student and instructor reflections, which describe the benefits of incorporating digital storytelling into a classroom.

The book is timely and new, with a production date of 2016. I think incorporating digital storytelling into any classroom if timely and could be included in most any classroom. In the future, the youtube videos may need to be updated, but given how the book is laid out, this should be relatively easy to do.

Buturian’s writing is straightforward and clear. Terms are explained clearly, which makes the content accessible to instructors from a diverse range of disciplines.

Buturian employs terminology consistently. Her framework if logical and organized.

The text is a great example of a modular textbook. Each chapter does build on the previous work, but each chapter could also be read separately. I like the balance of explanation and practice through examples.

The textbook is well organized and flows in a logical fashion. It was quite easy to follow Buturian’s through processes and instructions as she described how to include digital storytelling in a classroom.

The links all worked well. The provided rubrics were very informative, as were the links to youtube videos. The text was large, well-laid out, and visually appealing.

I did not find any grammatical errors.

Buturian does a great job of including a diverse range of topics and examples from different cultures. She also incorporates inclusive language.

I enjoyed reading the book. The text and the ideas around digital storytelling were very accessible. I look forward to including a digital storytelling assignment in my spring 2018 teacher preparation course.

Reviewed by Norb Thomes, Learning Systems and Services Coordinator, Winona State University on 2/1/18

The author does a nice job of covering the use of digital storytelling from concept through completion. This is a really nice recipe for creating and using storytelling as an important part of teaching and learning. The only thing I would add is some real-world examples of what the author sees as exemplars. For example, I would like to see some storyboards and scripts from successful projects.

The text was accurate, free of errors, and unbiased.

The author described the activity and its benefits nicely without getting deeply into things that would date the information. The focus was clearly on the project and its relevance to teaching and learning while steering clear of items like the proper hardware that would quickly change.

The book is clear and concise. There is little use of language that needs definition or explanation.

From start to finish, the project is laid out is a manner that is easy to follow.

Individual chapters reflect individual aspects of the project. Breaking the work into modules will not be a problem.

The book flows well with one exception. The last two chapters, "We are the Battery Human" and "Learning Through Stories," do not fully fit the digital storytelling project. "We are the Battery Human" is a very interesting read on the balance between using digital technology and the footprint it leaves in the environment. It would make a really nice stand alone paper. "Learning Through Stories" discusses how written essays can be presented in illustration. This felt like a good subject for another book, maybe geared toward art and design majors.

The use of example videos and slide shows was great. Examples were woven into the text to support exactly the concept in each chapter. Links to appendices supplied additional detail while collecting all of the most detailed material in one central spot.

No errors were found. Nice editing job overall.

I saw not cultural relevance issues.

I enjoyed reading this book. I have used videos in projects in my own courses and I feel this is a very good set of instructions for designing and implementing digital storytelling in any course.

Reviewed by Mildred Barya, Assistant Professor, UNC-Asheville on 2/1/18

This book is elaborate and comprehensive in its explanation of what Digital Storytelling is about, the different types/categories, and how as an instruction tool for teachers, has potential to transform student learning. Incorporating students' work and reflection, exercises and assessment methods add to the overall completeness of the book. There is no index/glossary but I assume that in its place is the appendix provided at the end.

Other than being an ardent advocate of Digital Storytelling (passion versus bias--we get plenty of this not only in the introduction but also in the proceeding two chapters), Buturian is passionate in her strong belief that DS transforms the learning environment (she gives good reasons how and why), is necessary and perhaps timely as well, considering that we now live in a world that is deeply influenced by digital technology. The content is accurate and error-free.

Extremely relevant not only in subject matter but also in its practicability/implementation. It is written in a way that would incorporate updates easily based either on the changing nature of DS itself or students' needs.

Clearly written, accessible and conversational in tone. It's balanced in both formal and informal approaches. That said, some parts could be condensed so that they're more concise, for instance, Chapter one could be part of the Introduction. Buturian spends a lot of time "telling" us why DS is important instead of going straight into "showing." Later she does. Examples will always win over explanations.

The text doesn't depart from its premise. This is one of its strength.

This is another strength of the book. One can focus on a small section or module easily or different sections within a chapter without losing focus.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

This could be revisited. For instance, Introduction and Chapter one could merge. Chapter six could come before Chapter five, since the latter is more of a concluding reflection on the product of our time, while Chapter 6 is a continuation of DS content.

The text lends itself to easy navigation, scrolling and display. Inclusion of images, charts, clips, and so on, is done well so there's no confusion going back and forth, in and out.

I found unnecessary preposition "for" in one of the sentences: Something about "...awaiting for construction." instead of awaiting construction or waiting for construction.

This is a great strength of the book. It can be used in all cultures across the world and has good examples from culturally diverse backgrounds.

This book emphasizes the power of storytelling through digital media as opposed to traditional narratives. The impact of using stories in learning instruction (the ancients knew this) so we're just returning to it. Because storytelling is the transforming heart, this book would be especially effective in introductory courses that cut across disciplines such as Languages, Social and Natural Sciences and Humanities. Students from fields such as Engineering, Literature, Composition, and so on would benefit. This book has potential to bridge the gap between arts and sciences since its effectiveness relies on acquiring and transferring multiple skills that utilize various senses when using text, image, sound and so on.

Reviewed by Rebecca Owen, Adjuct Professor, Writing, Chemeketa Community College on 6/20/17

I teach composition courses at a community college, and one of the big assignments that both the students and I grapple with every year is the research paper. This text gave me a lot of new ideas about how I might incorporate digital storytelling into my composition courses. The author of this text does an incredibly thorough job explaining her own experiences with teaching digital storytelling in the context of a class about water. Even though this is a text designed for educators, she gives many different scaffolding exercises in the glossary to help other instructors start to incorporate technology and visual imagery into their classes. The book itself is thorough and organized quite well. There are many links and sample digital stories to peruse. Each chapter begins with a quote, which is a very welcoming way to transition from one topic to the next.

The author has done a meticulous job in creating a very beautiful book. Even though I read this on my laptop, I had the experience of reading an actual print copy. There was a lot of thought put into layout and arrangement here. No errors that I noted!

This text felt very new and fresh--the author discusses ways to utilize technology in the classroom as well as how to make technology a component in research assignments for a variety of subjects. It's interesting to think about how these methods could be used in a wide range of classes--science, humanities, English, math, sociology, among others. However, in one activity, she mentions encouraging students to use regular digital cameras rather than only their smartphones. If anything, she could be a little more open to letting students use what is available to them (i.e. smartphones) since many might attend a school that doesn't have a library of recording equipment or other technology to check out.

Very clear, easy-to-follow prose. The author of this text walks the reader through her own journey with digital storytelling, and she also shares her tips on making these types of assignments accessible and less daunting for students who might be afraid of making short films. The organization and layout of this text made it very easy to read from beginning to end. She featured student examples to help explain her concepts. One of the best features of this book was how adaptable it could be for all teaching styles and subjects.

The material is given here in five chapters. Each builds on the previous chapter. There's also an epilogue where the author shares her students' digital storytelling projects to illustrate the concepts covered in the text. During each chapter, if she references a scaffolding activity, there is a link to the appendix where the full text of the scaffolding activities are linked. The book is quite consistent throughout, and the author is an encouraging and helpful guide.

This book is well-organized. Each chapter builds nicely on the next. It's not a guide for students, but it provides good support to guide instructors into incorporating digital storytelling methods into the classroom. The activities referenced in each chapter are spelled out in the appendix. This makes for a very streamlined narrative. The author anticipates the reader's questions, too, and these are addressed in each chapter. There's also a helpful summary at the end of each chapter.

This textbook is structured very logically. It moves through a definition of digital storytelling into an explanation of how to include it in the classroom. The activities given in the appendix are extremely helpful. Without those, it might have made the presentation of this material a little harder to interpret. As mentioned above, the author seems to know where the reader might have questions, and she addresses those questions in the text.

Beautiful layout and organization. I was able to view this text on my phone and laptop without disruption. It's very clear that this author had aesthetics in mind as well as organization. This made for a very pleasant and easy read.

Nothing to note, error-wise!

The author includes a chapter that discusses some of the oft-forgotten realities of tablets and other modern media: the means used to gather metals and other elements from locations like the Democratic Republic of Congo. She alerts us to the ethics of using this technology--we must be aware of how we obtain these materials or risk further harm to the people whose lives are at risk for our technological pursuits. She also mentions that a good way to combat this is by using smart technology like tablets and iPhones as educational and storytelling tools, not just a means for texting or visiting Facebook.

There are a lot of exercises and activities in this book I'd like to use in my composition courses! I have a lot of ideas about how to re-structure my research paper assignment! Thank you!

Reviewed by Alison Pelegrin, Instructor, Southeastern Louisiana University on 6/20/17

The progression of the material is intuitive. The book is clearly set up, but I do think that a more detailed Table of Contents, with links to specific parts of chapters, would be useful. read more

The progression of the material is intuitive. The book is clearly set up, but I do think that a more detailed Table of Contents, with links to specific parts of chapters, would be useful.

This text is accurate and timely. It is unbiased and the attention to storytelling implies that all experiences and backgrounds are valuable and worth preserving in this manner.

This book is up-to-date, but the nature of the subject is such that it will likely need updating--I do not consider this a flaw of the book, but the nature of its subject.

The text is quite clear--while the book seems most appropriate for instructors and perhaps upper level students, college freshmen could use the text with little help.

The text never deviates from the structure outlined in the Table of Contents and Introduction. Each chapter is similarly organized, and this makes the book easy to navigate.

The text is easy to read, but I do think that the colors used in the book need more contrast--the black text is sometimes difficult to distinguish from the blue headers. It is easy to navigate each chapter.

It is a book that would be useful to instructors more than students, as I think it encourages the design of assignments that writing students would find interesting. The topics discussed are timely and appropriate, and the assignments and rubrics provided are very helpful.

The interface is easy to navigate--the introduction explains the layout of the book, and the text does not deviate from that. Internal links in the text are quick to open.

I found no grammatical errors.

The text is culturally sensitive. By placing value on digital storytelling, the text values technologically savvy students and the skill set the bring to classroom. Rather than shaming them for their use of technology, it gives the tools they necessary to harness their voices in a way that would be helpful in many types of classroom settings.

This is an interesting and useful text. I am thinking of adding this to the reading materials for a creative writing class that I am teaching on hybrid forms in poetry and prose. It may also be relevant for a class in which students discuss and design digital humanities assignments for undergrads. Digital story telling could also be something to introduce in a composition class working on personal narratives.

Reviewed by Rebecca Goodrich, Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Engish, Washington State University on 6/20/17

This text covers each step in developing and implementing a digital storytelling assignment, with one glaring exception. The author can't assume that readers have any experience with video or audio editing, and some of the first questions readers will raise will involve the basic nuts and bolts of collecting assets (a term I believe is useful to describe the "parts" of a digital story: photos, video clips, music, sound effects, etc.) The author should have devoted one chapter to the rudiments of importing assets and arranging them on a timeline. She could have made suggestions for simple editing platforms, many that are free to use. Even though the technology changes, those recommendations could be easily updated in the ebook. Suggestions for editing platforms include Adobe Spark, iMovie, WeVideo, Windows Movie Maker, among others.

I felt the author did a good job of describing the most common types of digital stories, the types of learning that they inculcate, how to assess student learning. I noticed that she referred to "Royalty Free" music as equivalent to legally available. That is a common misconception. Royalty Free assets are copyrighted and usually require a fee to use. Ther Royalty Free simply means that the user does not have to pay a royalty fee every time the asset appears online. The fee can be anywhere from $4 for a one-time use to several hundred dollars for an asset that will appear on a commercial website.

The text is very relevant and will be useful for the foreseeable future. It is applicable for a wide range of ages and abilities.

The text was a very quick read. I found the quotes at the beginning of each chapter cumbersome and often quoted out of context. Chapter 5 seemed out of step with the overall focus of the text. It is devoted to a fuzzy discussion of the environmental impacts of using digital devices. I didn't see that it added any information to the topic of using digital storytelling in the classroom.

I didn't notice any issues with consistency.

The text is well-organized. The smaller assignments are easy to access via links to the appendix.

Except for the Chapter 5 outlier that I've described before, I felt that the text flowed very well. The topic is introduced, the many types of stories are described, then the author outlines the process of leading students through a digital story assignment. She culminates with a brief discussion of assessing the stories, mainly by providing sample rubrics.

The text performed without difficulty. The typeface is easy to read. The text is formatted so that it is easy to read onscreen. I had no difficulty reading the text and following the links.

There are a few punctuation flaws, but I didn't make note of them. I did see that on page 115 the author uses a pull-quote that appears in a block. Because she quotes so often from other writers, I assumed that it was from an outside source, but was not properly attributed. But then, in the very next paragraph, she repeats the quote verbatim. It's repetitions and cumbersome. I guess the quote is her own words, but I don't see why they were repeated in the main text. The block quote really should be deleted for ease of reading and to avoid distraction and confusion.

Excellent. She gives great examples of using digital stories with a variety of students, on a great variety of topics. It felt very inclusive.

As a trained digital storytelling facilitator and an instructor of a university course called "Digital Storytelling" I was excited to see this text. I feel that it will be an excellent resource for teachers who want to learn how to use digital storytelling in the classroom. It is not a stand-alone text. Teachers will have to find other sources of information to learn how to teach students to edit photos, video, and music, and to assemble them into engaging, impactful digital stories.

Reviewed by Carol Patnaude, Associate Professor, Community College of Rhode Island on 4/11/17

I found the text to be very comprehensive for working in higher education and/or secondary school educators wanting to provide new learning opportunities for their students. Digital storytelling opens doors for students and faculty to present projects and assignments in an innovative way with appropriate use of technology. The text can be used in a variety of courses, is easily adaptable, specific and user friendly. The examples, assignments and resource links are practical and useful. An index would be helpful.

The text is accurate in providing information for implementation of digital storytelling. As the text is not written in the manner of a textbook it covers all key elements needed for those who are new to digital storytelling. The process and methods are clear while no errors were found. Students favor the use of learning using multi-media approaches in any aspect of the curriculum, this is a benefit to both students and teachers.

The text is relevant in that it meets the needs of students as they learn through the use of digital storytelling. Technology is here to stay. Students would prefer to be creative active learners rather than passive. The links, videos and examples can be easily updated as the need arises.

The text is easy to read, clear and consistent in its format. The examples help to connect the written information to the visual.

The text is consistent in its format and focus.

The text is organized, visually appealing and provides the right balance of text with examples, resources and links. Educators would find this text easy to use. Additional texts, reading and relevant information regarding digital storytelling could be a fine compliment for those seeking further knowledge.

I found the chapters to be arranged in a logical manner. I would suggest including resources at the end of each chapter as it would seem to be a better fit.

The text is easy to read and clear. I did not have any difficulty opening the links however in a few instances it was not easy to get back to the text page where I left off.

The text contains no grammatical errors.

The text provided relevant and culturally sensitive examples that were inclusive of language as well as samples from a diverse student population. I can easily see this approach used in higher education courses such as (but not limited to) Cultural Diversity, Sociology, Language Psychology etc.

I found the book to be a practical guide that would be useful for adding digital storytelling as a teaching tool. The rubrics and exercises can be adapted for individual use. It would be interesting to include a sample syllabus and course requirement for the reader to examine the application to digital storytelling.

Reviewed by Jiyoon Yoon, Associate Professor, University of Texas Arlington on 4/11/17

Linda successfully provided her wonderful ideas of how to integrate stories with the advanced technology with appropriate index and glossary. read more

Linda successfully provided her wonderful ideas of how to integrate stories with the advanced technology with appropriate index and glossary.

Linda clearly explained her stories with the accurate, the error-free, and unbiased writing. The student artifacts, exercises, and the evaluation rubrics, appropriate to the contents of the book, helped the readers understand better the contents.

Story-telling is the classical teaching method that most of parents and teachers have liked to used. But Linda approached the classical story-telling differently with the most advanced technology. Her direction of how to combine was easy and straightforward to be implemented in the classical teaching methods.

Linda wrote the book in lucid, accessible prose, and provided adequate context for any terminology used.

Linda consistently talked about story-telling all through the book.

Each of the chapters can be easily and readily divided into smaller reading sections.

All the topics in the chapters except Chapter 5 are presented in a logical and clear fashion. I think Chapter 5 needs to move to the introduction or the end.

The navigation was excellent with the technology! All the student examples in the middle of chapters and the exercises in the appendix were easy to be checked and gotten back to the original place.

No grammar errors.

Linda wrote this book in Minnesota providing with the artifacts of her students. The artifacts naturally reflected the culture of Minnesota. By using the culture in daily lives, Linda was telling about her story. I like the idea of using the culture. When people are within and related to their culture, they generally feel comfortable and understand things better.

I will introduce this book to my students who will be the future elementary science teachers. This book brought brilliant ideas of how to integrate literacy, social studies, and technology with science. In the past, I had the “water project” with my students to save the world water. As part of the project, my students created and posted campaign posters on campus. For our next “water project,” I will add developing their digital story-telling.

Reviewed by Nina Spiegel, Associate Professor, Portland State University on 2/15/17

This text is geared toward educators, rather than students. It is therefore not a book for use in the classroom, but a text to use to prepare assignments for a course. Its goal is to demonstrate the value of using digital storytelling in the classroom, to encourage educators to create digital storytelling assignments, and to provide examples and insights into how to develop these assignments. The book provides a thorough discussion of digital storytelling as well as an appendix that includes a variety of assignments. It also provides links to a range of useful examples on youtube. The book does not include an index or a glossary.

While I am not a specialist in digital storytelling, the content seems accurate. I did not discover any errors. The author is direct about her perspective: Buturian clearly views digital storytelling as an effective teaching tool and seeks to convince educators to try using this method. The author provides compelling arguments and reflections from students and educators on the benefits of digital storytelling assignments.

The content of the book appears up to date. A guide to developing digital storytelling in the classroom is an important topic and the book provides relevant points and examples. Depending on changes to technology, the youtube examples might need to be updated at some point in the future. It appears as though new examples would be relatively easy to input into the text.

The text is written in a clear manner. It is accessible to a variety of audiences and disciplines and well explains terms and concepts.

The text uses terminology consistently.

As mentioned above, the text is not geared toward use in the classroom, but rather is aimed for use by educators for classroom preparation. The text is organized in a coherent manner that is easily usable and accessible by educators.

The text is overall organized in a clear and coherent fashion. Chapter 5 contains reflections that might fit better in the epilogue.

The youtube links are helpful and appreciated. When I clicked on other links, such as to the mandala example or to examples in the appendix, I was not able to easily return to the original location in the text. This is an interface matter that could be improved to make the text more user friendly.

The text does not contain grammatical errors.

The text incorporates inclusive language as well as examples from different topics and cultures.

This book contains several important and helpful elements describing how to develop digital storytelling assignments. At times, it seemed repetitive in terms of its continued justification of the use of digital storytelling in the classroom, and some editing would thus have been useful. In addition, while it is helpful to see a broad range of examples, it would also be useful to directly follow a few specific courses in a more linear fashion by including the syllabus and the assignments leading up to the final digital storytelling project alongside the educator and student reflections of these assignments and courses, all in one place. While some of this material is currently located in either the text or appendix, it would also be helpful to have it organized and presented together according to syllabus and course. This could be added in this format into the appendix.

Reviewed by Krista White, Digital Humanities Librarian, Rutgers University Libraries on 2/8/17

Aimed at educators, not students, this is not comprehensive in the sense of providing background to digital storytelling and the trend toward using multimedia to teach various "literacies" - digital, media, information, visual in secondary and... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

The Changing Story: digital stories that participate in transforming teaching & learning is a how-to manual for instructors unfamiliar with using digital and multimedia assignments. It is a very fine, quick-start guide for incorporating digital storytelling into curriculum. The text is largely philosophical in tone, with a bent toward advocating for the methodology/practice of using digital storytelling exercises in addition to or in the place of traditional essays and tests.

The Changing Story is not a scholarly examination of the practice, and most of the literature to which the author links is illustrative in nature, rather than used to support claims of effectiveness of method as would occur with a more scholarly source. Readers should be cognizant that this is not intended as a source book with deep scholarly support and evidence to back up its pedagogical claims, despite the previous and emerging literature available on the topic in a variety of disciplines.

The text provides very useful links to resources for developing exercises and curriculum. I found the links to the DreamWorks tips for storyboarding, copyright resources and the VALUE Rubric Development Project especially useful.

Embedded links to multimedia resources related to book material is interesting and the author acknowledges that these multimedia resources are meant to be a "long tail" tool educators to use and re-use as they return to the textbook and develop their own strategies for the use of digital stories in the classroom. This model also allows for updates to the book with newer materials as needed, a well-designed innovation.

Examples of student work and faculty interviews are useful for orienting newcomers to the practice of digital storytelling. Scaffolded assignments are well-explained and can be easily adapted to individual instructor needs. The grading rubrics provided in Chapter 4 are good models on which to build or adapt for individual course purposes.

A solid, quick-start guide to incorporating digital storytelling into course curricula. It does not contain any background or history on the use of digital media in classrooms, so cannot be said to be "comprehensive." The scope is appropriate for its intended purpose.

Content Accuracy rating: 3

Accuracy is not an issue for this text, as it is a manual for implementing digital storytelling assignments in curriculum and not a traditional textbook. It does provide sound advice and solid examples of assignments for instructors unfamiliar with the processes and methods of digital storytelling. No inaccuracies were present, though it is a work that advocates for the use of digital storytelling, and is not at all unbiased. This is not a detriment in my opinion, though readers should be aware of it.

Digital storytelling is a methodology for pedagogy that has been emerging for the last few years. It will continue to be relevant with the implementation of standards such as the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy to incorporate critical thinking and various digital and research skills into curricula across the country. Edits and updates should be easy to implement as strategies and standards change.

Meant as a manual for instructors, the text is easy to read and provides excellent examples. The author defines digital storytelling well in the introductions, but many terms of art, such as "visual literacy" and "close reading" are utilized without formal definitions to help readers unfamiliar with them navigate and understand these terms.

The content of the book is generally consistent, with conceptual linkages between the more philosophical chapters (1, 2, 5, Epilogue) and the more concrete, procedural chapters (3 and 4).

Modules are set out logically. This book could be easily remixed with other sources to create a customized text.

Content in chapters 1 and 2 are thorough, but uneven in their treatment of topics and would benefit from reorganization. Chapters 3 and 4 are extremely well organized and flow logically. The whole book would have benefited from having resources listed at the end of each chapter, in addition to being individual links on which the reader must click to examine.

Interface rating: 1

Epub: Anchor links in the text work as expected, though the links in the grading rubrics do not provide the user a way to get back to the chapter text to which they correlate. The Illustrated versions of stories in the Epilogue do not work in an ePub reader (Adobe Digital Editions).

Web-based interface: Anchor links within the text need a serious overhaul. When trying to return to the text from an example of student work, the reader gets bumped to the end of the book, rather than returning to the relevant section of the chapter from which they linked. Links to specific scaffolding exercises take the reader to the beginning of the appendix, rather than to the specific exercise mentioned. "Returning to chapter3" takes the reader to the beginning of the chapter, rather than to the section of the chapter of the relevant scaffolded exercise. The illustrated stories in the Epilogue work well in hte online interface.

Text is well-written and free of grammatical errors.

As scholarship, especially in higher education, moves forward, methodologies like digital storytelling will take precedence over more traditional forms of scholarly publishing. This resource is extremely timely and will have relevance far into the future.

As someone who has been planning my own digital storytelling curriculum for a digital humanities lab attached to a literature lecture course, the advice contained here mirrored my own thinking the in the realm of scaffolded assignments to address issues of the "digital divide," as well as utilizing transparent rubrics for assessing assignments. Many of the suggested exercises and rubrics were innovative and I discovered useful ideas to incorporate into my own course.

Reviewed by Mike Mutschelknaus, English Instructor, Rochester Community and Technical College on 12/5/16

I am new to digital storytelling. I teach a lot of freshman composition at Rochester Community and Technical College. I've been teaching for a long time. I'm looking for new ways to approach my course. This book provided me with lots of online examples of digital stories. It also provided me with lots of scaffolded course assignments and exercises I can use. It has a very specific table of contents, but it doesn't have an index or glossary.

The book seems to be error-free. Obviously, Linda is a big fan of digital story-telling. If there is a bias, it's her assumption that digital story-telling is going to be the new paradigm for composition and rhetoric. I think, though, that she might be right. I watch my freshman students and my own children. They live in a digital world, so building digital stories is an important literacy skill for them.

This book is very relevant. I also think it will have longevity. Digital storytelling, in one fashion or another, is here to stay. I have a junior high daughter. I can attest that she would much rather create digital stories than write a five-page typed paper. Updates will be easy to make. There are lots of hyperlinks and connections to actual examples of student digital story assignments that can be updated as needed.

This book is written for teachers, not for students. As a teaching guide, it is very clear. I feel like I could use these techniques and implement them, at least partially, in my community college freshman composition class next year.

The book is consistent in the way that it assumes the digital storytellers will be college freshmen and busy teachers. It keeps the assignments at a straightforward level throughout the book.

The book is very modular. It's a combination of straightforward exercises, careful explanation of how to implement those exercises in the classroom, and inspiration for doing digital storytelling assignments. Each chapter does build upon the next, but each chapter could also be read separately.

The chapters are arranged in logical sequence. Linda explains what digital storytelling is, and provides some examples. She then discusses how to build assignments and how to assess those assignments. Finally, throughout the text she provides lots of student examples.

The text is clear, relatively large, and easy to read. All of the links to videos, digital stories, podcasts, etc., open easily.

The book is lucid and well-written.

The book provides examples from students from a wide variety of geographical regions and backgrounds. Linda also makes a strong argument that digital storytelling is a way to break down barriers.

Freshman composition teachers should read this book. I'm going to start incorporating elements of her assignments, one by one, into my course. I'm not going to change my entire course overnight. Over the span of a few semesters, though, I intend to transform my course with this book as a guide.

Reviewed by Laura Medina, Assistant Professor, University of New Orleans on 12/5/16

The book would be a good choice for educators considering exploring or committed to introducing digital storytelling into their pedagogy. It serves as a comprehensive introduction and overview to digital storytelling as a teaching and learning tool, as well as providing examples, assignments and assessment approaches. The table of contents and the linking within the chapters to videos, appendices and exercises are very useful. The book lacks an index, which would be an additional useful tool.

The content is accurate, no errors were found. The author's commitment to and passion for digital storytelling is clearly conveyed -- this is not an "unbiased" examination but a persuasive argument.

The overall concepts, exercises and assessment rubrics will remain relevant. Links to external media (YouTube) videos may become obsolete or need to be updated.

The prose is very well-written, clear and accessible, with very little if any jargon or technology terminology used.

The layout, language and content seem very consistent.

This is not a textbook for use by students. The purpose is to inspire and inform educators and provide specific methods for integrating digital storytelling into coursework of all subjects. For that purpose, it is well organized in terms of modularity.

Overall the book is well organized - topics are presented in a logical fashion and very helpful links are provided between chapters that have related materials. Chapter 5 "We are the Battery Human" and Epilogue "Essays" could be considered supplemental - they do not quite flow as informational tools but instead function as essays and food-for-thought.

The layout is pleasing and easy to read. The linking between chapters and external media is quite useful and well executed.

The text is very culturally sensitive and relevant.

This book is very persuasive in its advocacy of digital storytelling as a teaching and learning tool and would be very useful for any educator considering introducing digital storytelling.

Introduction
Chapter 1: What is Digital Storytelling?
Chapter 2: Types of Digital Stories
Chapter 3: Scaffolding Exercises
Chapter 4: Assessment and Evaluation
Chapter 5: “We are the Battery Human”
Chapter 6: Learning Through Stories

Ancillary Material

About the book.

The Changing Story gives you assignments, resources, and examples to use in your teaching and learning. It will also help you think of ways digital stories can be used in your teaching, and help students harness the power of visual storytelling.

About the Contributors

Linda Buturian has taught in the humanities at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for eight years. She has also taught writing intensive courses shaped around themes of sustainability. In 2006, Buturian was awarded a leave from the university to develop curriculum around the resource of water, and received funding to travel to New Zealand to research water resource protection and sustainability models. In 2007, Linda created a freshman seminar on water that integrates both the sciences and the humanities, and gives students the opportunity to create digital stories about water resource topics. The water seminar is in its third year.

Prior to receiving her masters of arts in literature and writing from the University of Cincinnati, Buturian was the director of a community environmental organization in the Oregon Cascades, which addressed citizen-based solutions to watershed and ecosystem issues. Buturian has published essays, poetry, short stories, interviews, and articles in publications including Shouts and Whispers (Eerdmans 2006), Life in Body (Cathedral Hill Press 2006), and Utne Reader .

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Map collections and resources : Multimedia storytelling

Multimedia storytelling
Introduction
ArcGIS StoryMaps

Knight Lab tools

Laptop mockup image with StoryMap viewable

Multimedia storytelling brings together text, images, maps, film, and interactive media to tell stories. To help students and instructors bring these kinds of web-based projects into the classroom, we are providing tools and workshops for those who don’t have a deep background in the subject.

We are happy to work with you or your class to develop digital assignments or to incorporate digital storytelling into the classroom. Storytelling projects can be used in lieu of standard papers or other assignments. Please see below for more information on platforms and resources available to you.

ArcGIS StoryMaps is an excellent online application for easily creating dynamic narratives or presentations. Your StoryMap doesn't need to be about or include maps but we're biased, you should use maps.

To see what our community has been up to using StoryMaps, visit our Show and Tell section!

Instruction

Create: StoryMaps is an online instruction that will walk you through the primary principles for creating StoryMaps. It has been intentionally designed to be approachable for beginners, so if you're new to creating digital maps using geographic information systems (GIS), this a great tutorial for you to get your feet wet.

Here is a brief look into the skills you will learn by completing the full instruction, the text for which you can access in Create: StoryMaps:

Create multi-layer maps in ArcGIS Online (AGO)
Configure AGO map pop-ups to include media
Utilize Stanford resources to compile StoryMap content
Basic principles of storytelling and design

Our StoryMaps

The following StoryMaps have been created by our staff:

Esri's 2019 StoryMap of the Year

"This story makes a rather rarified and technical process interesting and understandable in an informal, engaging style. We love the care the authors have taken to add custom graphic elements, and to showcase beautiful period maps. And we admire the integration of 3D mapping into the story. It's a model of how to use story maps in the digital humanities."

Stanford University Libraries has a robust digitization program to include paper maps out of copyright. Along with making these maps viewable (and downloadable) for everyone, we love digital projects that enhance the way we look at and learn from historic paper maps. This StoryMap explores several of these digital methods for engaging with digitized paper maps using The European Fronts map series published by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II.

A geospatial commemoration for the 150th anniversary of the first-ever transcontinental railroad. This StoryMap includes a photographic map tour using the Alfred A. Hart photographic collection, highlighted maps of this region and time period, and a look at historical geographic information system (GIS) data depicting railroad growth over time.

Additional StoryMaps Resources

Below are great resources for creating StoryMaps and/or using them as teaching tools:

Teach with StoryMaps | University of Minnesota

Discover assignment prompts, guidelines for instructors or students, exemplary student work, and other materials to leverage StoryMaps and ArcGIS as a teaching tool.

ArcGIS StoryMaps gallery | Esri

Looking for ideas? You've come to the right place. Discover the latest and greatest content from our storytelling community. See what stories we're loving right now, go behind the scenes with a featured storyteller, or browse top-notch stories on a variety of topics.

ArcGIS StoryMaps blog | Esri

Features blogs and live discussions on StoryMaps design tips and tricks, how others are using StoryMaps, and updates on new features.

The Knight Lab at Northwestern University has developed a host of storytelling tools that are free and easy to master. They range from timelines to “scrollytelling.” Here are some examples:

Whitney Houston, 1963-2012

Revolutionary User Interfaces

StoryMap (not to be confused with Esri's StoryMaps)

The Garden of Earthly Delights - Hieronymus Bosch

Spotlight is Stanford’s online exhibition platform and covers a wide-array of topics. Spotlight may be best suited to a class-wide project, where the end goal is an online exhibition.

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How to Incorporate Multimedia into Your Storytelling

What is multimedia storytelling and why should you incorporate it into your content plan?

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Also co-authored by Calvin Koon-Stack, Hattaway Communications.

Before the dawn of written history, people have been sharing stories through spoken word. This tradition has produced some of the greatest stories of the Western world, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey. But much has changed since the heyday of Homer. The creation of new forms of media—ranging from the written word to video and social media—have radically changed the way that people tell stories. These new forms of media—and new platforms that can integrate them—have incredible implications for storytelling.

To help navigate the world of multimedia storytelling, we’ve sought out best practices from the Advanced Media Institute at UC Berkeley , the Poynter Institute, and the International Center for Journalists .

What is multimedia storytelling, and why use it?

Multimedia storytelling is the art of conveying a narrative through multiple forms of media, such as text, audio and video. This approach provides new opportunities for telling stories, but also raises new challenges. Different forms of media have different strengths—and they must be used intentionally. When done well, multimedia stories are able to leverage those strengths to convey emotion and build empathy in ways that single-medium stories cannot.

Multimedia stories are also interactive in a way that single-medium stories aren’t. By incorporating various types of media, you are creating a story that your readers can explore. This interactivity is an important feature that allows you to engage your audience and seek their input and feedback. Inserting clickable quizzes, comment boxes, and graphics provides an exciting way to get the audience to participate in the story experience.

Additionally, multimedia storytelling is versatile. Multimedia stories can take many forms, and you can adapt the model endlessly to find what form works best for your story and your organization. This versatility can also help build capacity in your organization. For example, creating short video clips to include in a multimedia story can help prepare your team for producing longer video stories in the future.

How to create a multimedia story

Identify a story. Consider the different specific stories your organization can tell, and select one that is well-suited to multimedia. The best multimedia stories are multifaceted. They include action, exposition, strong characters and powerful emotions, all of which can be conveyed through different forms of media. In order to have a successful multimedia story, it needs to have several elements that come together to play an important role.

Create a storyboard. Building the storyboard of a multimedia story requires nonlinear thinking. Instead of identifying the “beginning,” “middle,” and “end” of your story, break it down further into constituent parts such as who, what, when, where, why and how. Who are the main characters in your story? What is the event or situation? What is the context? Understanding these constituent parts will help you to decide what media are necessary to your story.

Choose your media. Each medium has specific strengths, and depending on the skills and knowledge held by your team, you may find yourself leaning on some media more than others. When creating your storyboard, identify which medium can be used for which constituent part of your story.

Video. Great for conveying action and emotion, but limited ability to show processes or explain complexity.
Photos. Great for conveying emotion and the scale of landscapes. Remember to “put people in the picture,” and select photographs that feature people’s faces.
Audio. Works well in combination with other media, such as photos or video. Short clips have greater impact. Brings the voices of characters into the story.
Text. Can be used to describe background, complex processes and big ideas, complementary with other media.
Graphics. Can take you where cameras can’t go. Great way to illustrate processes that explain how something works.

Construct your narrative. Once you have identified the constituent pieces of your story, you can begin to arrange them into a narrative. You can use the Social Impact Story Map from Storytelling for Good, or an alternative story map such as the Voyage & Return. As part of this process, it will be helpful to sketch the visual layout of your story, to make sure that you are using your multimedia evenly throughout.

Create a media bank. Just as it is important to create and maintain an archive of your stories, so too is it important to archive your multimedia content. If your organization is holding a major event or conducting work in your community, be sure to take pictures, make recordings, and save them. Once these events have taken place, you won’t be able to go back and gather content—so gather material while you can. You might not have discovered a purpose for the content yet, but it will be a vital resource for your future storytelling work.

Links for inspiration:

Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek
Across Continents: A Stolen Laptop, An Ominous Email, And A Big Risk from NPR
ReBuilding Haiti
2015: The Year in Visual Stories and Graphics from The New York Times
InteractiveNarratives.org

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Spoken from the heart: an interview with storycorps' eve claxton there is nothing more powerful than a story told by the people who lived it..

Nonprofit Photography: Ethics and Approaches Best practices and tips on ethics and approaches in humanitarian photography for social impact.

Periscope for Nonprofits: A Quick Guide & Review Use live streaming in your storytelling strategy.

Cutting Through The Jargon Make your stories simple and appealing.

Use Tumblr to Collect and Spread Stories Planned Parenthood utilized Tumblr's Submit feature to collect stories and start conversations about sexual and reproductive health.

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Center for Teaching Innovation

Digital storytelling.

Welcome to Storylab, the Creative Technology Lab’s initiative to help instructors and their students create meaningful digital storytelling projects.

Students setting up camera for outdoor filming with trees in background

Many instructors turn to digital storytelling as an inclusive teaching practice, to offer assignment choices that move away from the traditional 5-10 page paper, to help students develop the skills to communicate ideas that are important to them, and even to encourage original thought and authentic assessment in the face of AI-generated content. Storylab aims to help instructors design meaningful digital storytelling assignments for students and to help students develop the skills to complete these assignments.

Digital storytelling can take many forms, including short videos, podcasts, or media-rich web-based digital exhibitions. While often used as a means to tell personal narratives, this genre also includes stories about other people, and can take on broad or innovative topics from climate change to engineering inventions, or any number of subjects that go beyond the personal. After all, when we convey information we often do so by telling a story.

Depending on what the instructor wants to accomplish and the size of the class, Storylab support can likewise take many different forms.

In consultation with the instructor, our project assistance can include assignment design, assessment support, supporting narrative development and creativity, and technical support on the use of various digital storytelling tools.
We offer in-class demonstrations of digital storytelling options for both large and small classes, and have also created a self-paced course module that can be modified to fit course needs within Canvas. Students can work through this module to become familiar with story creation and the use of various software packages.
For smaller classes, we can facilitate peer review sessions and help students iterate the development of their story, as well as give technical demonstrations and assistance.

Space and Equipment

The CTI maintains two self-recording studios that are available to instructors for Podcasting, lecture capture recordings (Panopto), or conducting web conferences. Both rooms are outfitted with high-end media equipment, along with sound-dampening treatments to assist with audio quality.

To assist with story creation and technical assistance, we can provide sign-up hours for your students with our Storylab staff in our Creative Technology Lab.

If you are interested in learning more, please fill out the Creative Technology Lab intake form and we'll arrange a meeting to discuss your interests.

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Multimedia Storytelling

Multimedia storytelling has the power to provide context and depth to news stories, fundraising drives, marketing campaigns, and personal stories. This hands-on course will provide a comprehensive overview of multimedia storytelling and show you how you can create compelling multimedia stories using a smartphone and accessible technology. This crucial messaging plays an important role across a diverse range of industries, from journalism, documentary, and filmmaking to marketing and nonprofit administration. Work with your instructor to develop and build a character-based story over eight weeks, and gain practical experience in all facets of digital story design and production while workshopping with your classmates. In the first four sessions, learn about the foundations of storytelling and how to capture different multimedia elements, work on weekly assignments to practice what you learn, and gradually build your final project. The course encourages engaging in constructive discussions and group critique that help you to refine your learning experience. Throughout the course, professional guest speakers join to talk about their real-world experience, share inspiring stories, and answer your questions. Topics include story research, story pitching, production planning, acquisition of digital photography, digital audio, and digital video, editing, design, and digital publishing. Registering at least three weeks prior to the course start date is highly recommended. This course may be used to fulfill the requirements of the Certificate in Journalism and the Certificate in Storytelling. It may be taken to pursue these certificates, or as a standalone course. Questions? Contact us at The Center for Publishing and Applied Liberal Arts (PALA). Email [email protected] or call 212-998-7289.

More details

You'll Walk Away with

The skills to identify and tell compelling human stories
The technical skills to capture and edit digital media and publish to the web and social platforms
An understanding of how to use storytelling across industries to communicate and inspire
Professionals across industries interested in learning how to improve their work by using storytelling
Aspiring and practicing journalists who want to acquire multimedia skills

Summer 2024

12 seats left, course details, additional information.

Have you considered our Certificate Programs? Certificate in Journalism Certificate in Storytelling

Course Number

WRIT1-CE9113

Continuing Education Units (CEU)

Our Mission

An Exercise in Digital Storytelling

Digital media can be a good way for students to explore interpretations of a literary work, and to tell their own story.

Teacher works in small group with high school students in school

To engage my 11th-grade English students during the 2020–21 school year, I created a digital storytelling unit. Whether they attended school in person or remotely, it was a success. Students were able to explore various frames of reference, identify a personal story to share using digital media, and experience empathy throughout the process. Digital storytelling has a permanent place in my classroom.

Getting Started

As an initial activity, students analyzed “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” by Walt Whitman. After they made their own analyses, they viewed three different digital representations and readings of the poem. As they experienced each visual depiction, students answered a few guiding questions:

How is the story told?
What elements/strategies contribute to the story being told?
Which one do you prefer?

This activity demonstrated how an author can convey their message through digital media and intonation.

Avoiding a ‘Single Story’

After discussing the different depictions of Whitman’s poem, students viewed Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk, “ The Danger of a Single Story ,” to experience a foundational understanding of how varied individual experiences make up frames of reference, a key element of empathy. Avoiding a single-story perspective enables students to identify a diversity of thought, perspectives, an onslaught of emotions, and empathy.

Students adopted a commonly agreed-upon definition of empathy: “the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from their frame of reference.” They explored the definition within various pieces of literature, answering whether the authors present a single-story perspective in their writing, including “ My Father in English ,” by Richard Blanco, and the micro-fiction piece “ Witness ,” by John Edgar Wideman. With some classes, I also incorporated poetry by Sonia Sanchez and Audre Lorde and a story by Junot Díaz.

Students then rewrote a moment from any piece of literature we read, first reanalyzing the literature for frames of reference. Whose perspective does the author represent? What authorial choices communicate the perspective? What’s another possible perspective the author could have used to tell this story? By identifying the perspective and emotions that the students wished to convey, their selected rewritten moment would avoid reducing the character(s) to a single story.

Examining Identities

Next, to further explore elements associated with empathy and varied frames of reference, students examined literature and artwork through a perspective from an identity that differed from their own. For the Identity Resource Activity, students self-identified aspects of their own identity; I then asked them to select a different perspective to explore. I provided a list of potential resources (poetry, artwork, music, information about artists) for the following: Latino, Native American, Black (Haitian, Jamaican, for example), African-American, LGBTQ, Asian American, Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, Muslim faith and Islamic culture, Jewish faith and culture.

Students could also identify another identity, if they chose to. Students completed a reflection related to their understanding of the new frame of reference.

Telling a Story—With a Digital Element

For the unit’s culminating assessment, students identified their own story to share, with an intended frame of reference to communicate to the audience, using a digital medium. To teach the foundational storytelling elements, the Moth gave me permission to access their curricular materials. The Moth is a nonprofit organization, located in New York City, that focuses on the art of storytelling. I implemented their resources, including example storytelling by high school–age young adults such as the Moth EDU episode “ Hot Wheels .”

After analyzing the storytelling elements within several examples, I provided my own personal storytelling model, using the Moth’s storytelling elements, for students’ analyses. I shared my planner and my presentation, telling the story of the first time I jumped off the high diving board at the Pines Hotel in New York when I was 7. The digital element of my presentation included childhood photos of me jumping off the board, as well as a photo of my grandmother who led our yearly trips.

This allowed students to see my planned frame of reference and give me feedback about the empathy they experienced as audience members.

Students’ final presentations included a student-selected digital element; some incorporated multiple or single photos, or videos. As students listened to their peers’ presentations, they identified the degree to which they felt they understood the storyteller’s frame of reference. When I reviewed the results, the majority of students’ responses indicated a high level of understanding of their peers’ frame of reference.

Applying frames of reference to personal stories connected students so that they could have a better understanding of their peers’ frames of reference, along with my own. Examining frames of reference allows students to experience empathy in a new way.

As we return to class, digital storytelling can give students access to different interpretations of an art form and enable them to explore the concept of empathy through literature, art, and music.

Associate Professor, Communication and Digital Media, St. Joseph's University

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#ctpf22 Multimedia Story Assignment

About the multimedia story assignment.

The Multimedia Story Assignment has six primary goals:

to help students learn the principles and practices of effective multimedia storytelling
to help students learn and put into practice ethical storytelling research practices
to help students learn how to compose a single narrative using multiple modes of communication
to help students step out of their comfort zones with regards to composing online
to build on their experiences with collaboration
to reflect on the work they have created

The assignment is informed by five Course Learning Objectives:

Objective 1: Effective Communication Students will begin to understand the foundational and contemporary principles, practices, and ethics of effective media communication, in particular in terms of how it applies to writing, typeface, photography, and social media.

Objective 2. Multimedia Storytelling Students will begin to understand the principles and practices of effective multimedia storytelling, including non-extractive co-creation, and be able to analyze and create media objects which effectively apply multiple media rhetorical and aesthetic goals.

Objective 3. Inclusive Use of Communication Technologies Students will begin to develop and enhance their use of various communication technologies for the purpose of creating intentional, precise, and inclusive media objects with specific rhetorical and aesthetic goals.

Objective 4: Inquiry and Reflection Students will begin to develop their understanding of the important roles of inquiry and reflection during the reading, creation, and communication process.

Objective 5: Experimentation Students will begin to develop their ability to step out of their comfort zones and take risks with their approaches to and understanding of communication, design, and storytelling practices and techniques.

Your Multimedia Story will be include the following:

Individual Proposals
A Gear Discussion
Video and/or Audio
Alphabetic Text
Layout Sketches
Complete Multimedia Story Draft
Final Multimedia Story
Multimedia Story Reflection

Multimedia Story Assignment Specifics

For this assignment, each student will research, create media for, compose, and publish to a subdomain on their website a multimedia story that contains at least the following modes of communication:

alphabetic text
photographs
video or audio

The modes of communication must be implemented in such a way that they work in concert to tell a seamless narrative. Students may choose to enhance these modes by adding others (such as gifs, graphics, and so on) they believe they will enhance the story.

Student may choose from two presentation approaches for their story:

alphabetic text-driven with other media enhancing the story (like “Snow Fall”)
photography-driven with other media enhancing the story (like“Kickball” and “Detroit Bike Culture,” with the addition of video or audio)

Word counts, photo numbers, and video/audio lengths to be announced soon.

When completing the background work for their multimedia story, students will put into practice what we have learned about non-extractive co-creative engagement practices and open-ended interview techniques. When composing their stories, students will put into practice Lambert’s seven stages of storytelling as well as many of the blogging techniques (lead, bold text, and so on). When creating photographs, students will put into practice the composition and soulful image techniques we have learned.

All stories will adhere to the best practices for inclusive design.

In order to facilitate collaboration throughout the project, students will be broken into groups of 4 . Though students are broken into groups, each student is responsible for composing their own unique story using media that they have created . In other words, alphabetic text that they, themselves have written and photographs that they, themselves, have captured. (We will discuss what that means for video work at a later date.)

Choosing a Topic

When choosing a topic, students should focus on locating an SJU-affiliated group, organization, community, event, or person that they believe would make for FOUR engaging stories .

Because of the non-extractive co-creative approach we are taking, at least one of your group members must have a direct connection with whatever group, event, or individual you choose to work with. Further, whomever you decide to work with will receive copies of all raw footage you create , which means that they can then use that material when creating content they may want to create. The process, then, is mutually beneficial. They will also have a say in the final presentation of the material so both you and they are sure they are presented accurately.

SJU Partner Proposal

Your proposal will take the form of Blog Post 3.

Details can be found in the Design Blog Assignment Prompts section .

Creating the Story Page

Your final multimedia story will be presented on its own page in a new subdomain. Here are the steps to set everything up:

Step 1: Create a Subdomain, Install WordPress, Link to Subdomain

Please follow the steps in the below video to learn how to create a subdomain, install WordPress on it, and link to it from your main site.

This video describes what a subdomain is and why one would need one, how to create a subdomain, how to install WordPress on the subdomain, and how to link to it from a main domain. It covers:

0:00: Introductory remarks 0:48: Defining a subdomain and why someone would create one 3:00: Creating the subdomain 4:15: Installing WordPress of the subdomain 7:10: Linking to the subdomain from the main domain

Step 2: Install and Customize the WordPress Himalayas Theme

In the WordPress dashboard of your subdomain, please complete the following:

Install the Himalayas theme by going to Appearance –> Themes and Click Add New. Search for Himalayas. Install and Activate the theme. We are using this because it provides a nice single page layout.
Install the Classic Editor and Fonts plugins . If you don’t recall how to do that, see the intro to WordPress and Google Fonts Plugin videos I created.
Customize, then
Himalayas Design Options, then
Default layout for pages only, then

screenshot showing to select the no sidebar design option

Click the blue Publish button to save changes.
Create a new page (not post) for your story and name it something meaningful. (The title can be changed later.)
Make the new page the static home page by going to Settings –> Reading and Click Static Home Page radio button and then select the new page from the menu. Be sure to save changes.
Edit/Compose the About page that describes you and gives information about the story. Discuss how you completed the story — number of interviews, total hours of footage, number of visits with your partners, etc. These will help people who see the story more fully understand the extensive work you put into it and, in a way, validate it.

Important Dates

Note that due dates may change based on various events during the semester. Be sure to check the Course Schedule for updated due dates as they may not always be reflected here.

10/26: Individual Proposals Due by 11:00pm
TBD: Photos and Video and/or Audio drafts due
12/2: Alphabetic Text Drafts Due
12/5: Complete Multimedia Story Draft #1 Due
12/5 – 12/7: Class Canceled for Conferences
TBD: Final Multimedia Story Due

Comments are closed.

His office location is Bronstein Annex 202, and in Spring 2024 his office hours are TH 12:00 - 2:00 and by appointment. Please email him to make an appointment or just pop into the class Zoom link. He'll be there.

#ctpf22 Quicklinks

Bill's COM 200 Test Site
Blog Post Checklist (.pdf)
Creating the Multimedia Story Page
Design Blog Assignment
End of Semester Reminders (.pdf)
Final Course Info and Checklist (.pdf)
Interview Checklist and Guide (.pdf)
Multimedia Story Assignment
Participant Consent Form
Photography Techniques Assignment
Photography Techniques Assignment Submission Details
Reading Response Assignment
Some Important Wordpress Terms
Wordpress Portfolio Site Assignment
Wordpress Site at Midterm Checklist (.pdf)

Helpful Design Links

Colorblind Filter
How to Take Screenshots
Lorem Ipsum

helpful how-tos

Adding Audio Over Still Images
Adobe Premiere Editing Tutorials (B:Social Created)
Adobe Premiere Tutorials
Audacity Tutorials
Black and White Slides for Use in Videos
Coverting MP4 to AVI with Easy Converter (created by wrtf10 student)
Creating an Effective Folder Structure for Movies
Creative Commons Licenses
Extracting Audio From Video Clip (iMovie 8)
Extracting Audio From Video Clip (WMM) (.pdf)
Flip Ultra Instructions (.pdf)
How to Download and Convert Online Video
How to Rip DVD Clips
How to Take and Edit Screen Shots
iMovie '08 Tutorials
iMovie '09 Tutorials
iMovie 2017 Ken Burns Effect
iMovie 2017 Tutorials
iMovie HD and importing from Flip Video camera (video)
iMovie HD tutorials (ignore importing info)
Ken Burns Effect in iMovie 08
Ken Burns Effect in iMovie HD (ebook)
Prezi Tutorials
ProfHacker 101 Tutorials

Digital Humanities

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Communities

Multimedia Storytelling

Crafting your research into a non-academic story can be a powerful DH implementation. The following categories provide tools for:

Tools, Apps, and Software
3D Modeling, Photogrammetry, AR, & VR
Oral histories and podcasts
Open image and multimedia collections
Embeddable exhibits
Easy animations

At the bottom of this page, you'll also find some recommended readings and examples of interactive storytelling.

Tools, Apps, & Software

Eko Studio This powerful authoring tool allows you to create interactive video experiences, including alternate endings/storylines.
Hackastory's Tool Directory This wonderfully compiled directory has easy-to-use tools for journalists and other storytellers, without heavy-coding required! Check out many categories, including VR, Video, Multimedia, Data, and More!
IFTTT IFTTT is a web-based service that allows users to create chains of simple conditional statements, called "recipes", which are triggered based on changes to other web services such as Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, and Craigslist. IFTTT is an abbreviation of "If This Then That".
Inform Inform is a programming language for creating interactive fiction, using natural language syntax. Using natural language and drawing on ideas from linguistics and from literate programming, Inform is widely used as a medium for literary writing, as a prototyping tool in the games industry, and in education, both at school and university level (where Inform is often assigned material for courses on digital narrative).
Omeka Omeka is a free, open source content management system for creating rich narratives or online digital collections that is easy to use. Create online exhibits, projects, and teaching tools and more.
Scalar Scalar is a free, open source authoring and publishing platform that’s designed to make it easy for authors to write long-form, born-digital scholarship online. Scalar enables users to assemble media from multiple sources and juxtapose them with their own writing in a variety of ways, with minimal technical expertise required.
Steller Steller lets you create stories by combining photos, videos and text directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch. You can share it both inside the app, as well as on other social networking sites including Twitter and Facebook. Featured by Apple as one the Best Apps of 2014 and 2019.
Transmedia Storytelling 101 A simplified breakdown of Transmedia for students and artists from Professor Henry Jenkins's blog (2007).
Tumblr Tumblr, stylized in its logo as tumblr, is a microblogging platform and social networking website founded by David Karp and owned by Yahoo! Inc. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog.
Twine An open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories. Project examples and documentation are on the Twine wiki.
Wakelet A free, web-based tool to share articles, videos, images, tweets and other content with one link. Save them for later and create collections, called `wakes`, at any time.

3D Modeling, Photogrammetry, AR, & VR

A-Frame.io A web framework for building virtual reality experiences. Make WebVR with HTML and Entity-Component. Works on Vive, Rift, desktop, mobile platforms.
Blender Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline.
Kubity Kubity is a cloud-based cross-platform application and service that allows instant messaging of 3D files across multiple devices: desktop computers, smartphones, tablets, augmented reality gear, and virtual reality glasses.
Photoscan Agisoft PhotoScan is a stand-alone software product that performs photogrammetric processing of digital images and generates 3D spatial data.
SketchFab With a community of over one million creators, they are the world's largest platform to publish, share, and discover 3D content on web, mobile, AR, and VR.
SketchUp SketchUp is 3D modeling software that's easy to learn and fun to use--more "sketchy" and less photo-realistic than SketchFab.

Oral Histories & Podcasts

Podcasting 101: Resource List NYU Library Digital Studio Ashley Maynor's list of suggested further reading, recommended equipment, resources, and communities culled from many such lists that preceded it (including work by Jenna Weiss-Berman, Alex Kapleman, Kaitlin Prest, and Helen Zaltzman).
Oral History in the Digital Age This site, full of links, resources, best practices, and recommendations for oral histories in the digital age is a product of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Leadership project and a collaboration among the Michigan State University Museum; Michigan State University Digital Humanities Center, Matrix; the American Folklife Center (AFC/LOC), the Library of Congress; the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH); the American Folklore Society (AFS); the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries; and the Oral History Association.
NYPL Community Oral History Transcript Editor Join us in editing and polishing computer-generated transcripts of the New York Public Library's Community Oral History Project. This community driven project will make accessible over 1,000 stories of New York City's past and present.
Audacity Free, open source, cross-platform audio software, Audacity is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.
LibreTime Libretime is an open source radio automation and broadcasting solution helping communities get on-air with ease.

Open Image & Multimedia Collections

The following websites provide searchable repositories of images, sound, moving images, and other digital assets from which to build your transmedia work.

Best Practices for Attribution A guide for how to credit Creative Commons resources.
British Library Image Collection on Flickr The British Library (BL) has released over one million images from 17th, 18th, and 19th century books on Flickr. Equally important, the images and metadata have been released into the public domain. While the metadata is currently limited, BL plans to release a crowdsourcing application next year that will build on human-provided descriptions to facilitate automated metadata creation. Although the images and data are available for use and reuse without restriction, BL is following an increasingly common trend among GLAM institutions where attribution is requested (rather than required).
Flickr Creative Commons Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license.
Freesound Freesound is a collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds. Browse, download and share sounds.
Internet Archive Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library offering free universal access to books, movies & music, as well as 376 billion archived web pages.
NYPL Public Domain Collections The New York Public Library offers over 180,000 digitized items for free reuse. Search NYPL Digital Collections and select "Show only public domain" for materials that require no license.
US Library of Congress Flickr Stream The LOC Flickr collection offers sets of digitized photos: the 1,600 color images from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, 1,500+ images from the George Grantham Bain News Service, selected panoramic photographs, portraits of jazz musicians and personalities, and other photos from collections that possess these qualities: they have long been popular with visitors to the Library; they have no known restrictions on publication or distribution, and they have high-resolution scans.

Easy Animations

Adobe Spark - Graphics, Stories, Videos Create impactful social graphics, web stories and animated videos with Spark’s free graphic design app.
Animoto Make great videos, easily. Turn ordinary photos and video clips into stunning, HD videos with Animoto's online video maker.
Explain Everything Explain Everything is a unique interactive screencasting whiteboard app. Create and share ideas as videos and more with easy-to-use tools and integrations.
LICEcap - Animated GIFs LICEcap can capture an area of your desktop and save it directly to .GIF (for viewing in web browsers, etc) or .LCF. Works with Windows and OSX.
VideoScribe - Whiteboard Video Animations Make your own whiteboard video animations with Sparkol VideoScribe – award-winning video scribing app for PC, Mac and iPad. Free trial available.

Some Examples of Interactive Narratives

Gone Home A first-person interactive story adventure video game developed and published by The Fullbright Company in 2013 about a young woman who returns after traveling abroad in 1995 to find her entire family gone from their home. Received acclaim from critics.
Highrise Highrise is a multi-year, multimedia documentary project about life in residential highrises, directed by Katerina Cizek and produced by Gerry Flahive for the National Film Board of Canada in partnership with the New York Times.
Welcome to PinePoint A 2011 interactive web documentary by Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge, collectively known as The Goggles. The website explores the memories of residents from the former mining community of Pine Point, Northwest Territories, as well as how we remember the past.
The Works of Chris Milk Milk has focused on using cross-media innovations to enhance emotional human storytelling, exposing the beauty in the things – physical, digital, intangible – that connect us all. The Johnny Cash Project and The Wilderness Downtown with Arcade Fire take the intensely personal, emotive power of music and use breakthrough technologies to create a visual experience that is interconnected to a global consciousness. Milk's "The Wilderness Downtown" was named as one of TIME magazines 30 Best Music Videos of all time, and was exhibited at MoMA in NY for 6 months in 2011.
Star Wars Uncut Star Wars Uncut is a 2010 fan film remake of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It is a shot-for-shot recreation of the 2004 "Special Edition" re-release of the film made from 473 fifteen-second segments created and submitted from a variety of participants. The full film was made available on the Internet in August 2010 and may be watched for free.
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Last Updated: Mar 1, 2024 12:01 PM
URL: https://guides.nyu.edu/digital-humanities

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5 Digital Storytelling Assignments in the Classroom

Digital storytelling takes advantage of the vast array of today’s technological options to tap into storytellers’ creativity. This technique uses animation, video, music, images, and other multimedia to compile a narrative. The following 5 examples of digital storytelling in the classroom demonstrate that it can be used for its surface purpose: to develop narratives or practice a foreign language, as well as in content courses to present and discuss abstract concepts and material.

1. Creative writing assignment

Individually or in pairs (if this is a first digital storytelling assignment, pairs is probably a better idea), students tell a particular type of creative story, per the assignment. Assignments can include telling a story about a personal experience that they have had and embellishing it so it is partially fictional, or something completely fictional. They can also write something creative as a spin-off or supplement to another class concept, such as telling a fictional story about a day in Socrates’s life to supplement a unit on studying some of his philosophy. This is also a good assignment for a language learning class, where the telling of the story itself is the goal, rather than the ideas that are contained within the story. Target genres can also be assigned if you like, such as humor, adventure, drama, or fantasy.

Rather than writing the entire story and turning it in in written form, students develop the script, then illustrate the story and narrate it as appropriate.

For this assignment, students will employ a variety of software options to tell a creative fictional or personal story. One option is to have the story be no more than 95% narrated, and can be much less than 95% narrated if you wish. The additional portion of the story should be told nonverbally using images on the screen. A minimum of 3 different software formats should be included (e.g. animation, PowerPoint or other presentation software, images, music or other sound track).

Tip! Most digital storytelling assignments involve the use of computer speakers. Take care of this in advance, #2 and #3 from this list are great for classroom use.

Suggested requirements:

Final video length: 2-4 minutes.
Time for completion: 1 month

iSpring Suite

Fully-stocked eLearning authoring toolkit for PowerPoint. No training required to start!

2. Science assignment

Digital storytelling assignments do not have to stop at personal or creative writing. These types of assignments can add flair and creativity to other subjects as well, and present concepts in new and interesting ways. Such creative presentations of topics within the disciplines will help students acquire the material, for both the group of students constructing the story as well as the recipients of the story. For digital storytelling within the disciplines, it is recommended to assign the story to small groups rather than individual students, because these are more challenging assignments and more contributors should make for higher quality production.

In small groups, students use digital storytelling to define and describe a particular scientific concept.

cell growth and division
habitat and diet of a certain animal species or species family
skeletal system growth, wear, strengthening, and deterioration
Anything that has a process is a good topic for a digital storytelling assignment, as is anything that needs description, such as a certain animal’s habitat to support its diet.

Suggested requirements:

Length: 4-6 minutes
Full script is due one week after the assignment.
Full story is due one month after the assignment.

This can also be used for larger concepts, and extended to a quarter-long project if you like. In this case, the total length should be 12-15 minutes.

3. Math or Statistics assignment

In small groups, each group is assigned a particular statistics concept to present. All groups can approach the same concept if it is particularly difficult and students are generally struggling with it, or each group can present a different concept.

Students must creatively develop a story to illustrate the concept. This is a large extension of a word problem. Students create a story, with characters, action, and character problems to solve, to illustrate the need for the concept and the particular use of the concept. Statements of “why only this will help and no other approach” should be included. This will include statements of other options and why those other options are infeasible for resolving the problem at hand.

develop a scenario for which regression statistics is necessary, and no other statistical test will resolve the problem. Include statements of why no other statistical test will resolve the problem
develop a scenario requiring linear algebra to resolve. Include statements of why no other approach will meet the needs of those in the situation.
Students should use a minimum of 3 different software tools in their presentation.

Length: 2-4 minutes (you don’t want the students getting bogged down in the narrative, as will likely be the temptation with a longer assignment. So, keeping it short is designed to keep the focus on the concepts, with the narrative supporting the concepts.)

Full final product is due one month after the assignment.

4. History/anthropology/culture compare/contrast assignment

The social sciences are an easy and logical extension of the digital storytelling technique since the social sciences are inherently about people. Thus, it’s a short jump from the personal or creative fiction narrative to illustrating a concept in the social world. History can easily be told using this technique, as the students make a certain set of events in history come alive in the present via digital storytelling. Similarly, studies of faraway lands and their people can be brought into the classroom using digital storytelling. This enlivens the topic for the learners, as they are participating in both the story construction and in viewing the story being told by their peers. It can be a highly effective way to teach these topics and achieve and retain student engagement in areas that may be traditionally low in terms of student interest.

Individually or in pairs (especially for younger learners), students discuss two particular related topics via digital storytelling. The assignment is to create a character or cast of characters, and tell the story through the character(s) developed, as if those characters were living and experiencing these events first-hand.

Compare and contrast the social mores of 19th century Victorian England with those of 21st century Elizabethan England.
Compare and contrast Islam with Judaism.
Compare and contrast the rise of the Ottoman Empire with the rise of the ancient Chinese Empire
Compare and contrast Roman architecture with Bavarian architecture, circa 20th century
Compare and contrast the art of the Renaissance with the art of the Baroque period

Suggested requirements:

Length: 5-7 minutes (longer if the assignment expectations and timeline are larger)

5. Argument assignment

Argument writing is one of the most difficult types of writing, and argument storytelling one of the most difficult uses of the digital storytelling technique. This approach requires a great deal of creativity and a lot of thinking. First, the arguments need to be crystallized and solid, then creativity needs to be explored to determine ways to present those arguments via digital storytelling tools. It is recommended to have students peruse samples available on the internet to gain a clearer understanding of what an argument would look like in a digital story.

In groups, students illustrate a particular perspective and make a compelling argument using digital storytelling techniques. The script of a digital story argument will not likely look exactly like an argument paper will look. An argument essay has one essential audience member: the grader. A digital story, however, has numerous audience members. The argument needs to be presented in a way that is compelling to all audience members.

One way to achieve this is to create a main character. Through that character, the events that transpire involving that character, the character’s experiences as shown in the story, and expressions of the character’s thoughts and feelings, the argument can be conveyed.

Full script is due 10 days after the assignment. (this script is a little more challenging, so a little more time to develop it is in order)

Assignments can be given to students individually, in pairs, or in groups of 3-4 students. Because this technique strays beyond the traditional assignment, it requires a good deal of outside-the-box thinking. Thus, the more challenging the assignment, the more students should be involved.

Assignments can be short, with 2-3 week deadlines, on a single concept. They can also be mid-range, giving a month or so on a larger or more complex concept, or even quarter-long assignments that emphasize core course objectives. As students gain experience in developing digital stories, the assignment time can be reduced.

The narrative is the most logical use of the digital storytelling approach. However, there are as many ways to use digital storytelling as there are genres of writing. Indeed, digital storytelling techniques can be used for any type of presentation, on any subject. Below are the genres of essay writing, and digital storytelling can be adapted to any of these. Due to the challenges of reducing an abstract argument to images and video, the argument and critical genres especially may be more effective with groups rather than as individual assignments, at least for the first assignment.

Narrative (the cleanest, most obvious connection for digital storytelling)
Descriptive
Compare/contrast
Cause and effect

Any writing style can be adapted to the digital storytelling genre, with a little creativity.

A great way to develop digital stories is to use Microsoft PowerPoint together with iSpring Suite. This PowerPoint add-in that allows story creators to turn their PowerPoint presentations into an engaging video, mobile-ready interactive presentations, or more. It also makes it possible to create a story with a voice over like the one below.

Digital storytelling is the modern version of the classic narrative, and can be used in any discipline or course, and with any genre of essay writing. In the classroom, digital storytelling assignments offer advantages that include heightened student engagement in the subject, creativity, problem-solving, and likely interaction and group dynamics skills, not to mention increased literacy with software and exploration of new software. Whether assigning each group different topics or the same topic to all groups, students benefit immeasurably from using this approach to the material – just remember to be respectful of the learning curve, which can be quite steep (and frustrating and time-consuming) when approaching new software.

If you have any other examples of digital storytelling in mind, feel free to share your ideas in the comments below.

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Introduction to Multimedia Storytelling

Mm analysis.

Multimedia Analysis

Over the course of the semester, you will be responsible for analyzing and presenting on multimedia elements: audio stories, audio slideshows, videos, interactive data visualizations and multimedia packages. You will do one presentation and will select your presentation type/week in your week 2 section. Your presentation and accompanying blog post (350 to 500 words) should cover:

Things you like and criticisms you have and why
Most relevant news values and why
Why you think it works (or doesn’t) as an audio story, an audio slideshow, a video, an interactive data visual or a multimedia package

Requirements:

Find a journalistic story or strategic communication story (you cannot use the exemplars assigned for class or shown in lecture)
Create a post (350 to 500 words) on your WordPress site by the start of your section in the week indicated. The post should include: a link to the story, short summary of the story, and your analysis covering the points above. The post should be written in a professional style.
Present your analysis to the class for 3 to 5 minutes, including showing a segment of the story
Audio story analysis – week 5
Audio slideshow analysis – week 8
Video analysis – week 10
IDV analysis – week 11
Multimedia package analysis – week 14

Grading Criteria:

Basics: Did you meet the assignment requirements?
Content: Is your post well written with correct spelling, grammar and punctuation? Did you use AP style correctly? Was your presentation clear and did it cover the main points in the time allotted?
Depth: Did you thoroughly discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the story and provide some insights? Did you address the news values?

The multimedia analysis (post and presentation) is worth 25 points.

IMAGES

How to get started with multimedia storytelling
21 Top Examples of Digital Storytelling [Make Powerful Stories
Multimedia Storytelling: Slideshow Assignment handout and rubric
5+ Digital Storyboard Templates
PPT
Storytelling Tips & Tricks from Graphic Recorders at ImageThink

VIDEO

Multimedia Design 1 Assignment 2
Speech Storytelling Assignment
storytelling animation (DRAMA assignment）
the art of storytelling
Digital storytelling assignment
Digital Storytelling Assignment 1 :The story about my career

COMMENTS

The Changing Story: digital stories that participate in transforming
But to emphasize how a digital storytelling assignment could require research and personal narrative to create an interesting hybrid narrative would be useful for a lot of courses. ... participate in transforming teaching & learning is a how-to manual for instructors unfamiliar with using digital and multimedia assignments. It is a very fine ...
PDF Introduction to Multimedia Writing
CJC06102020 MMC5006, Introduction to Multimedia Writing Cunha, Fall 2020 Page 10 Course-Level Objectives Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: 1. Explain the principles of digital age storytelling. (CO: 1) 2. Analyze the roles of storytellers. (CO: 2) 3. Develop creative storytelling concepts for a broad audience.
Map collections and resources : Multimedia storytelling
Multimedia storytelling brings together text, images, maps, film, and interactive media to tell stories. ... We are happy to work with you or your class to develop digital assignments or to incorporate digital storytelling into the classroom. Storytelling projects can be used in lieu of standard papers or other assignments. Please see below for ...
Empowering Students Through Multimedia Storytelling
Empowering Students Through Multimedia Storytelling. By telling their stories through multimedia, students develop skills in critical thinking, writing, research, and collaboration, as well as owning their learning and effecting change. Perceptions of people and events are very much dependent upon who you are and what your experience has been.
How to Incorporate Multimedia into Your Storytelling
In order to have a successful multimedia story, it needs to have several elements that come together to play an important role. Create a storyboard. Building the storyboard of a multimedia story requires nonlinear thinking. Instead of identifying the "beginning," "middle," and "end" of your story, break it down further into ...
Digital Storytelling
Welcome to Storylab, the Creative Technology Lab's initiative to help instructors and their students create meaningful digital storytelling projects.. Overview. Many instructors turn to digital storytelling as an inclusive teaching practice, to offer assignment choices that move away from the traditional 5-10 page paper, to help students develop the skills to communicate ideas that are ...
PDF J 006: Introduction to Multimedia Storytelling
J 006: Introduction to Multimedia Stor ytelling 5 Written homework Students will complete various assignments leading up to the creation of multimedia stories for blogs, social media, audio and video. Out of Class Only Portfolios Students will create a portfolio consisting of various multimedia storytelling techniques.
Examples
Below are example final projects created by prior students in Introduction to Multimedia Storytelling. Please note that some assignment requirements have changed and may not match the requirements for your multimedia package (e.g. we no longer have an audio slideshow option) but they are all solid packages. Student examples:
PDF J 006: Introduction to Multimedia Storytelling
Multimedia Storytelling will prepare students for careers in digital journalism. Students will apply basic print, broadcast and online ... Assignments Other In-class Assignments 1. Students will create news and feature audio content on a topic relevant to a particular audience and platform. 2. Students will create news and feature video content ...
Course Details: Multimedia Storytelling (WRIT1-CE9113)
WRIT1-CE9113. 2.5. Multimedia storytelling has the power to provide context and depth to news stories, fundraising drives, marketing campaigns, and personal stories. This hands-on course will provide a comprehensive overview of multimedia storytelling and show you how you can create compelling multimedia stories using a smartphone and ...
PDF Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute Syllabus JOUR-GA 1260
Video Storytelling eBook: Each chapter corresponds to a week in the semester and contains lesson and assignment pages. ... Discussions occur in Slack. Your multimedia assignments will be produced in the field and filed to our Google Drive. Course Requirements . As has been said, "Showing up is 80 percent of life." We meet 14 times over the ...
An Exercise in Digital Storytelling
An Exercise in Digital Storytelling. Digital media can be a good way for students to explore interpretations of a literary work, and to tell their own story. To engage my 11th-grade English students during the 2020-21 school year, I created a digital storytelling unit. Whether they attended school in person or remotely, it was a success.
PDF Multimedia Storytelling
Introduction to the basic elements of multimedia journalistic storytelling. Students will produce news-driven multimedia packages for various storytelling platforms, including photography, audio, video, and data visualization. ... • All multimedia assignments and quizzes are due at 11:59 p.m. Sundayof the week they are assigned. Late work is ...
#ctpf22 Multimedia Story Assignment » Bill Wolff
About the Multimedia Story Assignment. The Multimedia Story Assignment has six primary goals: ... Multimedia Storytelling Students will begin to understand the principles and practices of effective multimedia storytelling, including non-extractive co-creation, and be able to analyze and create media objects which effectively apply multiple ...
About the Course
Introduction to Multimedia Storytelling (JMC:2020) Lecture: Wednesday, 9:30-10:20 a.m. in 101 BCSB ... Assignments turned in late without an approved extension will be marked down a letter grade for every day late. After five days late, the assignment will earn a 0. Please do not hesitate to contact us to discuss assignments including ...
Visual and Multimedia Narrative How-to and Examples
Examples. There are millions of examples out there. One way to classify them is between those done by professionals (more or less) and those done by individuals or private persons (more or less) that are more personal stories. There's a lot of interest in helping people create personal stories, though we're more interested in more public ...
Storytelling
She is the author of Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet" and coeditor, with Beth Kolko and Gilbert Rodman, of Race in Cyberspace." Database - Narrative - Archive - Seven interactive essays on digital nonlinear storytelling by Matt Soar and Monika Gagnon, editors. ISBN: 9780981203423.
5 Digital Storytelling Assignments in the Classroom
1. Creative writing assignment. Individually or in pairs (if this is a first digital storytelling assignment, pairs is probably a better idea), students tell a particular type of creative story, per the assignment. Assignments can include telling a story about a personal experience that they have had and embellishing it so it is partially ...
PDF University of Texas at Tyler Department of Communication
the assignment, may fail this class and will be subject to academic and disciplinary action. Assignments and course grade weights Mini-assignments (20%): You are expected to prepare for and be at all classes. On some class dates, you will work on a specific multimedia storytelling skill based on a prompt I will provide you,
MM analysis
MM analysis. Multimedia Analysis. Over the course of the semester, you will be responsible for analyzing and presenting on multimedia elements: audio stories, audio slideshows, videos, interactive data visualizations and multimedia packages. You will do one presentation and will select your presentation type/week in your week 2 section.
PDF MCOM 4325 Multimedia Writing/Storytelling -- Fall 2019
Multimedia Writing/Storytelling teaches basic skills to create multimedia journalism projects. Multimedia stories can incorporate text, images, audio, video and data visualizations. You will apply standards of journalistic reporting and writing to your ... assignment, may fail this class and will be subject to academic and . 6 disciplinary action.
PDF Multimedia Storytelling
well as the production specifications for the assignment, will receive a grade of 0. • All multimedia assignments and quizzes are due at 11:59 p.m. Sundayof the week they are assigned. Late work is not accepted. • All multimedia projects are due at 11:59 p.m. Sundayof the week they are assigned. Late work is not accepted.
PDF Multimedia Storytelling Atelier
Multimedia Storytelling Atelier COMM-3015 (3 credits) Portugal: Multimedia Storytelling and Intercultural Communication This syllabus is representative of a typical semester. Because courses develop and change over time to take ... All assignments in this course can be completed with applications found on most smartphones

The Changing Story: digital stories that participate in transforming teaching & learning

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Map collections and resources : Multimedia storytelling

How to Incorporate Multimedia into Your Storytelling

What is multimedia storytelling, and why use it?

How to create a multimedia story

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Use Tumblr to Collect and Spread Stories Planned Parenthood utilized Tumblr's Submit feature to collect stories and start conversations about sexual and reproductive health.

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Center for Teaching Innovation

Space and Equipment

Multimedia Storytelling

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Summer 2024

Course Number

Continuing Education Units (CEU)

An Exercise in Digital Storytelling

Getting Started

Avoiding a ‘Single Story’

Examining Identities

Telling a Story—With a Digital Element

Associate Professor, Communication and Digital Media, St. Joseph's University

#ctpf22 Multimedia Story Assignment

Multimedia Story Assignment Specifics

Choosing a Topic

SJU Partner Proposal

Creating the Story Page

Important Dates

#ctpf22 Quicklinks

#ctpf22 Student Sites

Helpful Design Links

helpful how-tos

useful free web sites, plugins, and applications

Digital Humanities

Multimedia Storytelling

Tools, Apps, & Software

3D Modeling, Photogrammetry, AR, & VR

Oral Histories & Podcasts

Open Image & Multimedia Collections

Easy Animations

Recommended Reading

Some Examples of Interactive Narratives

5 Digital Storytelling Assignments in the Classroom

1. Creative writing assignment

Suggested requirements:

iSpring Suite

2. Science assignment

Suggested requirements:

3. Math or Statistics assignment

4. History/anthropology/culture compare/contrast assignment

Suggested requirements:

5. Argument assignment

Introduction to Multimedia Storytelling

IMAGES

VIDEO

COMMENTS