Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity,   ISBN:9781412938501

Customer Rating: 

As a high school teacher who wants to try to keep up with her students' technological prowess, I got this book to help me plan a DST project. This book gave me the confidence to try one. I'm glad I bought it and have used it a LOT.

What this book did well: explain and give examples of what digital stories and story maps are, show and explain the steps in the process, and insist on copyright respect. Look at the Contents page; Ohler delivers what he promises.

I only wish Ohler had included calendars or timelines of other teachers' projects, because mine took longer than I expected. I take full responsibility for that, and actually expected mistakes on my part since I am a beginner, but I can't help but think I would have planned better had I had a model.

Incidently, my students were not as technologically savvy as I expected, and not saving the project correctly (with Microsoft Movie Maker) (some skipped the publishing step, for various reasons) was the most common mistake in that area. I recommend you have them turn in their project 3 or 4 days before the screening day so you can catch and have students fix those errors without wasting class time.

For other beginners: be sure the dialog/narration is included in the story board they turn in. My students groaned when I asked for the dialog to be written because they had already outlined the plot to me orally and through a map, but I caught numerous mistakes (insufficient or illogical plot development) thanks to the story board step.

Good luck. This book will really help.

Customer Rating: 

This book is really useful for anyone wanting to use digital stories in the classroom.