One of the best ways for learning anything is through telling stories. Stories are not new. They have transmitted heritages and values from before the time of the Hellenic epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. They can be the basis of curricula, as in the case of Socratic Arts' Story-Centered Curriculum, in which students learn by taking on appropriate roles in a simulation, or story. Shell's Global Scenarios are stories designed to aid managers in making decisions.
Digital storytelling carries on the tradition of stories through using various electronic media. One medium is VoiceThread, which allows you to "talk about and share your images, documents, and videos." It can be used in quite a few ways in addition to storytelling, such as:
- different forms of language practice,
- presentations, speeches, and debates, and
- learning, portfolio, and reflections.
For more information on using VoiceThread, see these resources:
- Great Book Stories
- Mathcasts
- Using VoiceThread for Digital Conversations (Bill Ferriter)
- VoiceThread for Educators (a ning site)
- VoiceThread 4 Education wiki
- VoiceThread in Education
- VoiceThread (edtech VISION)
- VoiceThread in the Art Room
- Seventeen Interesting Ways to use VoiceThread in the Classroom (Tom Barrett)
Other online tools for storytelling and presentations include
For more information on digital storytelling, see these resources:
- Center for Digital Storytelling
- Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling (University of Houston)
- Mediatized Stories (University of Oslo)
- Digital Stories (BBC Wales)
- 7 Things You Should Know about Digital Storytelling (Educause Connect)
- Digital Storytelling (Teaching Teachers)
- Digital Storytelling (The Connected Classroom)
- Digital Storytelling (Helen Barrett)
- The Best Digital Storytelling Resources (Larry Ferlazzo)
- Digital Storytelling (Center for Advanced Technology in Education)
- Digital Storytelling in the Classroom (an ebook by Microsoft)
- 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story (Alan Levine)
The list goes on and on. For a larger list, see Cybrary Man's Digital Story Telling links.
For those interested in writing (and reading) hypertext stories online, check out Hypertextopia. And there is also Storytron, an interactive storytelling site (in alpha right now).