The Art of Digital Storytelling

This article is about digital stories more specifically the art of writing a digital story. The author explains the Take Six method to storytelling in depth and provides an example of an elementary teacher teaching Take Six to her students. The teacher wrote two versions of the same experience to show her students the difference between telling the reader what happened, and actually putting the reader in the moment (showing). The teacher’s example was about a negative experience with her program director that almost made her not become a teacher. Version 1 was a summary of what happened to her, and in version 2, she transformed her story by using the take six method to get her students to experience the emotion in the story.

Reading this article opened my eyes to storytelling. The article does a good job of describing what needs to be included in a digital story. I really like how the author gave an explicit example of what is telling verses showing the reader. Storytelling seems like a very effective way of sharing experiences with on another and would like to learn more about how I can use this in my classroom.

Take Six: Elements of a Good Digital Story

There are six elements defined in the article, each element is a step to creating a good digital story. The six elements are: (1) Living Inside Your Story, (2) Unfolding Lessons Learned, (3) Developing Creative Tension, (4) Economizing the Story Told, (5) Showing Not Telling, and (6) Developing Craftsmanship. The first element is about getting the audience to your feel like they are experiencing your story first hand by you sharing who you are, what you felt, and what the moment/event means to you. The second element explains that a good digital story has to make a point, and the viewer should feel like they learned a lesson, or gained understanding. The third element, developing creative tension, is about making your audience feel the tension. There should be a problem/tension in the beginning that gets solved later on. The fourth take says a story needs to have a destination, to make a point. The article described the fifth element as, “Good stories use vivid details to reveal feelings and information rather than just saying something was tall, happy, scary, or difficult to do.” The sixth element is about combining media elements to convey meaning rather than just being artsy and decoration.

I appreciate how this article describes the elements well enough for the reader to understand while still being crystal clear. Another aspect of the article I like is how they relate creating a digital story to making a movie. For example you want the view to feel as though they are experiencing every emotion right along with you, just like a movie. The rubric at the end of the article will be helpful for when I try to create my own digital story.