Week 4 - Task 2

So I started off by watching the film "What is Digital Storytelling?" because I thought this would be a good starting point.  The only problem was that I could barely hear her! I had all the volume up on my comp and on the video but her voice was quieted down and the music covered a lot of it.  However, from what I heard, the use of digital storytelling with younger students seems promising.  Her point that it will help students who would benefit from different forms of learning was one that I completely agree with.  Although I personally learn really well from reading, there are some people who need to have a hands-on experience to really learn the material and fully comprehend it.  This would also create a great basis in learning for students at a young age.  To create opportunities where they would be able to create their own story using their own voice could possibly increase their interest in the entire learning experience by making it more fun.  After all, designing and creating their own "digital story" and then being able to hear their own voice narrating it would be so exciting!  I definitely felt that this was a good idea, as long as the technological aspects of it wouldn't be too time consuming or difficult for the students and faculty involved.

My personal interest was better reflected in the "documentary" and "record of experience" discussions.  I actually brought up an idea similar to this when I was talking about the benefits of having voice recordings on an ePortfolio in one of the first assignments.  I was talking about using voice and video recordings to make research more personal, allowing it to reach out to more people and keep them interested better than plain research papers.  Using a "digital story" to document research and explain it to people in layman's terms and scientific terms as well would be beneficial for any case study or project.  As far as my ePortfolio project in class, this would definitely allow for even more creativity.  The only issue here is that I have no idea how to upload videos and the like onto the web and embed them into an ePortfolio.  Also, would you need a video camera? Because all I have is the video feature on my camera.  So these were my main concerns with the digital storytelling aspect.