Digital Storytelling

This weeks topic is digital story telling. I had a lot of difficulty viewing the videos associated with this topic, a few on going issues with my internet connection. But I know that I could use digital storytelling with my students for just about any topic.
Integrating the design and production of class videos into the assessment of my class is something that I would enjoy doing, instead of me telling my students a story it can be my students telling me their stories. Doing this would be a way of relating it back to learning engagement theory. The students could be relating it to their lives, their environment, as some of the example videos showed, expression of support for a topic like animal protection, or the telling of a love tale.
Students can create, use up to date technology to challenge themselves with the creation of a video, video is valued in real world situations because it shows the processes that the students have had to go through to reach that final state of success where they have designed, produced, edited and shown their skills and their thoughts in a visual and audio medium.
Students can easily donate their final product back into the world through places like youtube where comments and constructive criticism can be made. They can show their opinions on real world topics, war, famine, animal abuse through these videos, this is their story telling.

Going back to voices from the cape.....
One of the first things that voices from the cape says to us about story telling is that the story comes from inside of us, which comes back to the children telling stories of some meaning to them. It would be pointless to ask a group of children to tell a story about American Gridiron for example if they have no prior knowledge of the topic and no motivation to find out the information. Another point that jumps out at me from this video is that the children need to know every aspect of the equipment that they are using, there isn't much point to a child guided activity when the teacher jumps in half way through because the child does not have the knowledge of how to finish the project because they haven't had the opportunity to learn. Helping our students to learn how to use all of the equipment they may use is vital to these children learning to tell a story using a digital medium or just to film a video.
The points the I think I can use in my class are that the children need to have interest in the topics they are telling stories about and they need to be given the opportunities to play with and learn about the technologies at their disposal.