Digital Storytelling -- Evaluating and Publishing

1. Digital Storytelling-- Evaluating and Publishing Dr. Helen Barrett

2. Themes • Aligning digital stories to standards • Evaluating digital stories - Rubric • Publishing stories online • CIC Digital Storytelling Project http://sites.google.com/site/digitalstorysite/

3. Aligning Digital Stories to Standards http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/alignment.html

4. Standards Addressedhttp://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/alignment.html • 21st Century Skills • National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS) • National English Language Arts Standards

5. Assessing Digital Stories Rubric

6. Simple Checklist(David Brear, Canadian Middle School teacher)

7. From my Digital Storytelling web page: Scroll to the bottom of the page

9. Elements of a Digital Story • Overall Purpose of the Story • Narrator’s Point of View • A Dramatic Question (or Questions) • Choice of Content • Clarity of Voice • Pacing of the Narrative • Meaningful Soundtrack • Quality of the Images • Economy of the Story Detail • Good Grammar and Language Usage

10. The art of presenting family storiesusing common software tools The Seven Elements of Digital Storytelling The Center for Digital Storytelling, Berkeley, CA, has defined seven elements for creating effective and interesting multimedia stories. Constructing a story is not a simple process that follows a recipe or prescribed formula. These elements require consideration for every story and determining the balance each element occupies in the story can take a lot of thinking and re-thinking.

11. The art of presenting family storiesusing common software tools A Point (of View) The Seven Elements of Digital Storytelling Stories are told to make a point and should not be presented as a recitation of mere facts. Define the premise of your story so that all parts can serve to make the point. Consider your audience and direct the point to them.

12. Rubric - Point of View - Purpose

13. Rubric - Point of View - Awareness of Audience

14. The art of presenting family storiesusing common software tools The Seven Elements of Digital Storytelling A Point (of View) A Dramatic Question You want to capture your audience’s attention at the beginning of the piece and hold their interest throughout. Typically you want to pose the dramatic question in the opening lines and resolve it in the closing lines.

15. Rubric - Dramatic Question

16. The art of presenting family storiesusing common software tools The Seven Elements of Digital Storytelling A Point (of View) A Dramatic Question Emotional Content Emotional content can help hold your audiences attention. The images, effects, music and tone of voice all lend to contributing emotion to the piece. Try to keep the elements consistent with the emotion of the moment.

17. Rubric - Soundtrack - Emotion

18. Rubric - Emotional Content

19. The art of presenting family storiesusing common software tools The Seven Elements of Digital Storytelling A Point (of View) A Dramatic Question Emotional Content The Gift of Your Voice Most likely the first time you heard your recorded voice you couldn’t stand the way it sounded. And you still can’t. Suggestion….get over it! Your voice is a great gift and even thought you don’t like to hear it, others do. If you “read” your script your audience will not know how to react. Take time to learn and practice your script so you can speak in a conversational voice. Record several takes and select the best one. Trust that your audience will think it is perfect.

20. Rubric - Voice - Consistency

21. Rubric - Voice - Conversational Style

22. The art of presenting family storiesusing common software tools The Seven Elements of Digital Storytelling A Point (of View) A Dramatic Question Emotional Content The Gift of Your Voice The Power of The Soundtrack Music is a big plus to a digital story. The right music can set the story in time and can convey emotion. Play music behind an image and a specific emotion is generated. Change the music behind the same image and an entirely different emotion is experienced. Sound effects can add tension and excitement to a piece, but be careful, they can be a distraction too.

23. Rubric - Soundtrack - Originality

24. The art of presenting family storiesusing common software tools The Seven Elements of Digital Storytelling A Point (of View) A Dramatic Question Emotional Content The Gift of Your Voice The Power of The Soundtrack Economy A compact, fast moving digital story will contain only those elements necessary to move the audience from beginning to end. We know that our brains are constantly filling in (from our own experiences) details from suggestions made by sights and sounds. Don’t give every detail to clarify your story, let your audience fill in some of the blanks.    

25. Rubric - Economy

26. Rubric - Images

27. The art of presenting family storiesusing common software tools The Seven Elements of Digital Storytelling A Point (of View) A Dramatic Question Emotional Content The Gift of Your Voice The Power of The Soundtrack Economy Pacing The rhythm of the piece is what keeps your audience’s interest in the story. Music tempo, speech rate, image duration, and panning and zooming speed all work to establish pace. Generally pace will be consistent, but once in a while it will pause, accelerate, decelerate, stop or blast-off.

28. Rubric - Voice - Pacing

29. Rubric - Duration of Story

30. Source: Jason Ohler Rule of 80/20 the production wall - costs, resources - last 80% glitz, fixing every little thing… Hitting the production wall 20% Last20% First 80% - project completion -

31. Publishing your story

32. Publishing Your Videos online • http://www.youtube.com (a very public space... OK for your students, but you might not like to post there) • http://teachertube.com or http://schooltube.com (two video hosting sites especially for schools) • http://video.google.com (a little less public, but Google may soon start charging $10 per year for an account) • http://blip.tv/ (I have a group of movies stored there: http://eportfolios.blip.tv/ ) • http://ourmedia.org (a community of individuals dedicated to spreading grassroots creativity: videos, podcasts and other works of personal media)

33. Online Storage • You can also choose an online file storage system, such as the one that Ed uses: Microsoft Windows Live Sky Drive: http://skydrive.live.com • The advantage of this system is that you can store up to 25 GB of all types of files, and you can password-protect your files. • I also like http://www.divshare.com/ to store files online, because they give you the code to embed your video into a blog or website (just like the video sharing sites). They let you store up to 5 GB of files.

34. What’s Your Story? Richness not possible in print Audiences worldwide but most likely small and intimate.

35. CIC Digital Story Project •  A digital reflective story about your experiences with Teach21 and what it has meant for you, your colleagues, and your students • A narrative reflection on your participation to complement your digital story • Related assignments and samples of your and/or your students’ work that emerged from the project. Application Deadline: Tuesday, April 21

36. Stories in three Partners in Learning areas • Multimedia Records of Practice • Electronic Portfolios • Math Dispositions

37. CIC PiL Digital Story Requirements • Between 2.5 and 4 minutes • Have written permissions to use student images • Music track optional… or use only royalty-free music • Mention CIC and the Microsoft Partners in Learning Project • Include student voices, where possible • Complete story by June 10, 2009

38. My Final Wish… May all yourelectronic portfolios become dynamic celebrationsandstories of deep learningacross the lifespan.

39. Dr. Helen Barrett • Researcher & Consultant • Electronic Portfolios & Digital Storytelling for Lifelong and Life Wide Learning • Center for Advanced Technology in EducationUniversity of Oregon College of Education • eportfolios@gmail.com • http://electronicportfolios.org/