digital+stories

=Digital stories= Author(s): Michael Schmeisser Editor(s): Phadlie Nordien

1. Definition
A digital story is narrated video of a short story (or educational concept) combining personal experiences of the narrator with their own creativity. This is done by combining your own recorded voice (telling the story or explaining the concept) together with appropriate still or moving images. Music or other sounds can be used to enhance the story and create a tone within the story. It allows the merging of all aspects of multimedia, which can then be used to address the different learning styles of students. These multifaceted stories allows for a more personal impact than what a story told with just text would. These videos are generally between 2 to 10 minutes long and can take the form of vodcasts, animations, slideshows, etc.

2. Examples of products (open source/free or commercial)
- //**Windows Movie Maker**// (included as part of Windows) - //**Photo Story**// (Free) - Allows you to create photo presentations with narration and sound effect etc. - **//Adobe Premiere//** (Commercial) - Professional video editing software. Rather complex to use - **//Pinnacle Studio 14//** - (Commercial) - Advanced video editing, but far more user friendly for novices - **Audacity**- (Open Source/Free) A tool for recording live audio [|Download here] - **GIMP** - (Open Souce/Free) A GNU image manipulation program. [|HomePage]

3. Examples of applications for Teaching and Learning
Digital storytelling is a tool that will find great application in the all sciences. Using narration to explain scientific concepts, together with images, sound and movie clips, provides a really powerful tool to drive home the message.

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 * Medical sciences:** Narration together with video clips and images of techniques used in actual operations.


 * Plant sciences:** techniques of plant propagation - video clips which are freely available, dubbed with that lecturer's narration. [|Plant Germination - A narrated story]


 * Computer Science:** could be used to illustrate the flow of data though a specific algorithm or data structure.

4. Other resources (articles, guides, videos, examples...)
[] [] [] ... video introducing the concept of digital stories. []

The YouTube video below gives an introduction to digital stories and is a simple example of how they can be used. media type="youtube" key="zP6CeGLPuOY" height="315" width="420"