Lesson 8: Visuals and Storytelling
Tell your Story
Visual Design
At the end of this lesson, you will be asked to create your own visual story. The Center for Digital Storytelling has created a Digital Storytelling Cookbook that can help to guide you in the creation of your story. Please read the first 35 pages of the Digital Storytelling Cookbook. You may want to look at assignment 8 before you start reading. As you read the Cookbook, think about the visual story you would like to tell others either in your personal or professional life. You can find the first 35 pages of the Digital Storytelling Cookbook online by following this link. Rather than explaining the elements of a good story, this Cookbook focuses more on the process of storytelling and guides you through seven steps to create your unique story.
Stories to promote learning
When something happens to us, we usually have the urge to tell other people. According to Shank (1995), telling stories can help us remember them. He states that when we tell a story, we make a single unit of a sequence of events and that this unit can be remembered more easily than its separate pieces. Shank (1995) claims that if we fail to create this unit, it is likely that our memory leaves individual pieces of the story disconnected from their preceding and following events. Telling our story therefore aids our memory.
Shank (1995) states that we often try to teach other people abstract rules of thumb that we derive from previous life experience. He claims it is usually difficult for other people to remember these abstractions. He claims that it is much easier for people to remember a good story. Stories do not only make events memorable for ourselves, but they also make them memorable for others. Matthews-DeNatale (2008) claims that learning and storytelling are intertwined. She states that the process of creating a story directly ties in with the process of meaning-making. She therefore not only suggests to tell stories as an instructor or trainer to engage your learners. She states that you can also engage your learners by having them create and tell stories themselves to better understand the processes, concepts, or historical events that they are learning about. She therefore recommends integrating storytelling into any teaching and training setting to enhance learning.
If you would like to learn more about how you could integrate storytelling in your own instruction or training, please take a look at Matthew-DeNatale’s (2008) document Digital Storytelling: Tips and Resources. In this document, she provides examples of how storytelling can be applied in different instructional settings and subject areas. She also provides sample assignments, assessment rubrics and links to open resources.
Assignment 8: Your Story
Description
- For this assignment, you will create your own visual story. This can be a fictional story, a story related to a (life-changing) event that happened in your life, a story related to your professional life, or a story related to a subject-area that you may be teaching. Before creating your story, write out your storyline step-by-step or create a storyboard. Add a short summary of your storyline to this assignment (approximately 100-200 words). As you think about the creation of your story, you may want to follow the steps described in the Digital Storytelling Cookbook.
- Next, create your visual story. In the previous lessons, you have learned about several visual media, such as photography, video, and infographics. For this assignment, you can use any visual medium you like (e.g. a video, a photo sequence, a cartoon, or an animation). Rather than “telling” your story, make sure you “show” it to your viewer instead. Make sure that at least 85% of the visuals are visuals you created by yourself and cite any other images that you used. You are free to choose the length of your story as long as it contains the six fundamental elements described by Lidwell, Holden, and Butler (2010). You can either paste your visual story into your Word Document or provide an external link to it.
- After creating your visual story, explain how each of the six elements (setting, characters, plot, invisibility, mood, and movement) described by Lidwell, Holden, and Butler (2010) have contributed to your story (using approximately a paragraph per element).
Submitting Your Assignment
At the end of this lesson you will submit your completed assignment. Assignment 8 should be prepared using Microsoft Wod. At the top of the notes in your Word file, you should have the lesson name, and underneath that should be your name, email address, and the date. When you save the document as a file on your computer, make sure the file is named “Assignment8”. After you have saved your file, go to the student interface and submit your assignment for grading. Click here if you need additional information regarding the submission of your assignment.
Grading Criteria
Part 1
- Provided summary of the plot in approximately 100-200 words. (3)
Part 2
- Setting: The setting of the story contributes to the overall storyline and shows the place and time period in which it occurs. (2)
- Characters: Viewers can identify with the character(s) and are therefore encouraged to care about them. (2)
- Plot: The narrative is interesting and the story develops in a thought-provoking, attention-grabbing, or unpredictable way. (2)
- Invisibility: The story is shown visually to the audience in an interesting way rather than told in a direct fashion. (2)
- Mood: The visuals match the plot well and create a specific atmosphere or mood that matches the storyline. (2)
- Movement: The story is paced well and the sequencing and flow of events keeps the story interesting. (2)
- The visuals look aesthetically pleasing and at least 85% of them are created by you. (4)
Part 3
- Carefully explained how each of the six elements contributed to the development of the storyline. (6)
Points: 25