Digital Assignment

“Digital storytelling is the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component. Digital stories can be instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective” (“7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling”).

Your assignment is to create a two-four minute digital story from your research paper. Remember that your goal for the narrative paper was to create a “so what” scenario for your reader. You wanted to introduce them a conversation about a certain issue. You showed them why that issue was important, and you introduced them to the key players that were discussing this issue. You crafted a thesis that tried to explain a dissonance, or an unseen connection. You want to translate this fascinating dialogue over to video. There are many ways to do this. You can use texts and words, your own voiceover, graphs, live footage, and music.

There are a few steps to creating a good digital essay:

• Making an outline of ideas

• Creating some kind of “script” for your own voice over, or text that you will use

• Starting to record video, find clips, gather photos, for your particular slides

• Putting the slides together

• Recording your voiceover, if using one

Making a digital story requires the same critical revision skills as editing a paper—the project must be coherent, concise, clear, relevant and thoughtful. You will be submitting drafts in the form of script, and also pictures, to workshop during class. Links to video (that should be “public” or “unlisted” need to be uploaded on youtube and emailed to me.

Popular Digital Storytelling software

• iMovie - import video footage and edit video clips (comes with a Mac)

• Final Cut Express- video editing software (Mac)

• Garage Band - used to create and edit music (Mac)

• Audacity - digital audio editor and recording application (what you will need for MovieMaker)

• Adobe Photoshop - graphics editing

• Camtasia - screen video capture program

• Windows MovieMaker- video editing (comes with a PC, also free download)

Examples of sample digital stories and digital essays from first year students (their video had to be slightly longer)

• Don’t Delete Me

• Art as Therapy