DIGITAL STORYTELLING

The digital story has two main elements, the script and the images. What benefits do digital story telling provide with regard to encouraging writing and improving writing skills? According to Ms. Spagat,

“The basic element of a digital story is the script.  It is a “considered text” – a piece of writing, often based on a scene, that is deeply reflective.  These scripts can be created with a greater sense of immediacy than most writing because the distribution of the story – the audience and the environment in which the story will be shown is generally much more tangible to the storyteller than is the case with many forms of writing.  The storyteller usually knows who will view the story and under what conditions, and is usually willing to be more committed to the writing process because of this immediacy. The script writing portion of the digital storytelling process represents an excellent opportunity for ESL students to practice their writing skills with gentle and encouraging support from teachers.”

Today's "digital generation" requires new approaches and methods of teaching,  we as educators need to be knowledgable enough in technology, to be able  to  make the learning process more fun and engaging for our students. Story telling is  indeed a useful tool especially for language teachers. Story telling itself has a log history. When I was a child my mom used to read for me stories with lots of pictures in them, which would take me to the world of imagination.
"The human brain has many remarkable skills, but one of its most outstanding is its pattern recognition facility. Filed away in memory, stories provide patterns students can use for comparison with their own experience, even when they are not consciously aware of noting similarities. With the introduction of television, the visual element of stories became more important than the story itself. It was erroneously thought that what gripped peoples attention was not the story, but the novelty".
(http://www.wcdd.com/wc/proposals/thprop/thscope.html)

Story telling is a great tool, but if it is done well. The challenge here is to make a good story. If it is done poorly it cannot engage students, furthermore it will not encourage them to go and create their own thus diminishing the students' learning. So it is vital to really take time and make a good story.

I found it challenging, because the given time  1min. was too short, however I tried to create something meaningful.

 It really took me a lot of time to think and be creative as to what kind of story I should create. I loved it, and it's a big YES , I will use this in my classroom and will enjoy the process  equally with my students.