uses of digital storytelling

The growing affordability and accessibility of technology has made digital storytelling a real venue for expression for a variety of groups. Digital storytelling has a vital role to play in identity formation for individuals as well as for communities and especially, I think, for young people.

Although it has often been studied in the context of urban youth and distinct ethnic/cultural communities, digital storytelling's uses can be expanded to positively affect the lives of people in many different situations - especially in the classroom. In these contexts, digital storytelling has been used to help the storytellers articulate and create narratives which help them form a better understanding of themselves and the world around them. Digital storytelling has been employed to engage communities, forge histories, and to hear the voices of individuals. It seems to have greater effectiveness if focused on individuals, but the process happens even when the focus is on a greater community. Because digital storytelling is so effective at community and individual identity development, it has the potential to be of great import to many people.

In the context of young people, the integration of digital storytelling into curriculum, as well as less formal learning situations, brings together important technological skill-acquisition and an awareness of self and the broader world (an awareness that is necessary for a successful digital story of almost any kind).

Young people are constantly (and I really do mean constantly) struggling with how they fit and don't fit in their worlds. As they transition from childhood to greater independence, they struggle to establish new identities in relation to their families, friends, teachers, neighborhoods, as well as hopes and dreams. A great number of research studies have explored how digital storytelling has been used to bring together a community around a shared identity or experience. It is clear that the digital storytelling process helped to form or solidify a community while also allowing the individuals within the community to explore their unique identities. In a classroom, personal digital storytelling could help students establish respect for each other as individuals as well as help to form a cohesive learning community.

In a classroom, non-personal digital storytelling can also hold value. The creation of digital narratives changes all of those involved, pushes them to reassess their identities and relations to the wider world. Digital storytelling requires a variety of literacies and a well-told digital story demonstrates as much critical thinking and skill as a well-constructed research paper. It must contain argument, understanding, and context and it must articulate them with passion, conviction, and skill.

How can digital storytelling be utilized outside of the classroom? Various after-school programs have successfully used digital storytelling to teach computer literacy as well as help their youth participants form a greater sense of self. Digital storytelling is being employed by adults as a new means of history-recording, and could easily be adapted to encourage young people to explore their local or personally-relevant histories.

For young people in particular, digital storytelling brings together a set of skills that are vital to their success as thoughtful, productive adults. The construction of a compelling digital narrative requires research, writing, revision, and a comprehensive grasp of the subject matter. It requires a comfortable literacy with a variety of computer functions - recording/creating and editing audio and images separately and together. It also requires young people to think about how what they are trying to communicate should best be communicated - through image, spoken word, written word, music, etc.

I'm taking a storytelling class this semester and we've explored digital storytelling creation. The results have been really wonderful - one young woman described her relationship to The Vagina Monologues in a digital story that made us laugh, captured our hearts, and then made a poignant argument about feminism and women's bodies. Other students translated folktales into charmingly illustrated digital stories for children. The stories were engaging in a way that simply reading the text would not have been, and captured in a new way the charisma of a story told in person.

In all of the contexts in which digital storytelling has been explored, it serves linked but two-fold purposes, no matter the original stated goal of the project. Digital storytelling - as a performative space - allows participants to understand, articulate, and control their identity and their relation to a larger community. Beyond urban youth, beyond specific ethnic and cultural groups, beyond historical narrative, digital storytelling has the potential to give us all voice, to teach us how to speak our stories and listen - truly listen - to the stories of others.

Read more:
Alexandra, Darcy. "Digital Storytelling as Transformative Practice." Journal of Media Practice 9.2 (2008): 101-12.
Fields, Anne, Karen Diaz, and Kelly Czarnecki. "Digital Storytelling in Different Library Settings." Library Technology Reports 45.7 (2009): 20-30. Academic Search Premier. Web. 30 Jan. 2011.
Hopkins, Candice. "Making Things Our Own: The Indigenous Aesthetic in Digital Storytelling." Leonardo 39.4 (2006): 341-44.
Hull, Glynda A., and Mira-Lisa Katz. "Crafting an Agentive Self." Research in the Teaching of English 41.1 (2006): 43-81.
Li, Ying. "Digital Storytelling as Participatory Media Practice for Empowerment." 2009 Annual Meeting. Proc. of International Communication Association. 1-28.
Manning, Corinne. "'My Memory's Back!' Inclusive Learning Disability Research Using Ethics, Oral History, and Digital Storytelling." British Journal of Learning Disabilities 38 (2009): 160-67.
More, Cori. "Digital Stories Targeting Social Skills for Children With Disabilities." Intervention in School and Clinic 43.3 (2008): 168-77.
Ohler, Jason. "The World of Digital Storytelling." Educational Leadership 63.4 (2005): 44-47.
Rose, Chloe Brushwood. "The (Im)possibilities of Self Representation." Changing English 16.2 (2009): 211-20.
Young, Jeff. "Digital Storytelling: Preserving a Cultural Tradition." Education Canada 50.1 (2010): 22-25.