For teachers who have attempted a digital story project in the classroom, you have undoubtedly faced the snarly challenge of explaining how a script for a digital story is different from any other type of written story. The most widely used approach seems to be to focus on the classic elements of effective composition: description, character, setting, and dialogue. BUT is this the best approach for creating a digital story that seems to rely more on the synthesis of images and voice?
When I used the composition approach, I would get a few students who wrote extensively detailed stories, four pages in length, complete with analogies. Fortunately, there were only a few 500 word stories that I had to help students revise. It didn't seem to make sense to push the students for two weeks to write, revise, add more detail and dialogue and then tell them they could only use a fraction of what they had written. I had a hunch I would run into this problem and when it came time to cross that bridge, I sped on to the production parts of the project.
I still believe that strong composition skills are an important part of the digital story process for young students, not so much for adults. I started using DS in the classroom because I wanted to prove that multimedia production enhanced student's literacy development. In general, I have plenty of data to support that claim, but when you take a closer look at the specific writing skills that can be evaluated that's when you see how writing a script for a digital story differs from writing a detailed piece that will meet your English teacher's standards.
I had a brief conversation with storyteller Jay O'Callahan, who recently embarked on writing his first book, about how writing a story differs from creating a story to be performed. I can only remember that he said that the two processes are very different. I think the same is true of writing a digital story script.
What's the most effective approach for teaching the most important part of the digital story process?
How does the approach differ for teaching students or those with little to no 'story' background?
What can we learn from video production classes and photography writing classes?
