Digital storytelling is a great resource for teachers and students. From the student’s point of view, they have the opportunity to disseminate information using their own words while implementing imagination and creativity. For students with disabilities, the use of digital stories can slow down the teaching process and break the information up into smaller pieces which can be beneficial. This for most students will help them to understand and retain the information longer. From the teacher’s perspective digital stories can create an engaging experience that will enhance most learning styles. So, are there any negatives to this type of technology based student centric learning? For me, yes. Clearly time becomes a factor as students spend at least two class periods planning, storyboarding, videoing, and editing all of the information needed to produce a quality product. Now, a topic that took maybe 30 minutes to teach and master has taken two hours of time. This is just not feasible in today’s classroom where every minute of instructional time is important. Having said that, would the time factor keep me from implementing this strategy into my plans at some point during the school year? Probably not, but planning for the right concept to apply this creative strategy to would be extremely important.
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