Brain researchers say human beings are hardwired to tell stories – to organize experience into a meaningful whole that can be shared with others. Giving students opportunities to use and direct this natural drive gives them a sense of confidence while it develops fundamental intellectual skills. Encouraging your students to create digital stories is not just a ploy to keep them interested; digital storytelling has proven educational benefits that help prepare students for success in the 21st century. Telling digistories. • Encourages research by helping students invest in issues and engaging them in dynamic, interactive processes of learning.
• Fosters critical thinking skills, helping students think more deeply, clearly, and complexly about content, especially when that content is challenging. It gives them practice in the skills of sequencing, logic, and constructing a persuasive argument. Creating storyboards and then editing stories reinforces these skills.
• Encourages students to write and to work at becoming better writers. Many students don’t think of themselves as writers or are daunted by the writing process. Writing, revising, and editing scripts for digistories makes this process natural and enjoyable. It promotes student-initiated revision instead of editing according to a teacher’s markups or a grade requirement.
• Gives students a voice. It empowers them to find their own unique point of view and relationship to the material they’re investigating and to express that viewpoint more fully and clearly. Many students find that sharing their digistories is far less threatening than reading their writing out loud.
• Tells a personal narrative. Enables students to share about themselves, such as a key turning point in their life or their family history. Digistories can embody the story of someone else, where the student takes on their persona and shares from their point of view.
• Fosters critical thinking skills, helping students think more deeply, clearly, and complexly about content, especially when that content is challenging. It gives them practice in the skills of sequencing, logic, and constructing a persuasive argument. Creating storyboards and then editing stories reinforces these skills.
• Encourages students to write and to work at becoming better writers. Many students don’t think of themselves as writers or are daunted by the writing process. Writing, revising, and editing scripts for digistories makes this process natural and enjoyable. It promotes student-initiated revision instead of editing according to a teacher’s markups or a grade requirement.
• Gives students a voice. It empowers them to find their own unique point of view and relationship to the material they’re investigating and to express that viewpoint more fully and clearly. Many students find that sharing their digistories is far less threatening than reading their writing out loud.
• Tells a personal narrative. Enables students to share about themselves, such as a key turning point in their life or their family history. Digistories can embody the story of someone else, where the student takes on their persona and shares from their point of view.
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