Submitted by Fiona Beal

Today we are starting a series of four posts about digital storytelling. Today is the first in the series focusing on what digital storytelling is all about.

Do you like stories? We ALL do! Our brains are wired for stories. Our lives are stories one scene after another!

The term Digital Storytelling has different meanings in different contexts I have discovered. Sometimes writing a story using a lovely online story editor such as Storybird is referred to as Digital Storytelling – and it probably is. Sometimes writing a story offline using PowerPoint or Keynote, and illustrating it, is referred to as Digital Storytelling – and it probably is. So the most simple definition of digital storytelling, that embraces both the above views, could be ‘Digital storytelling combines the original tradition of storytelling with technology’.

I like this widely held definition of digital storytelling. “Digital storytelling is the art of combining storytelling with a combination of digital graphics, text, recorded audio narration, video and music, to communicate information about a specific theme or topic”.

Let’s hear what Jerome Gratigny says about digital storytelling in this short 1.47m video called ‘What is Digital Storytelling?’

Examples of digital storytelling

1. Be more dog

This is one of my favourite digital stories. It contains a good message

2. Handa’s hen

This is a lovely children’s story complete with video, music and narration – but no words

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Follow on in this series of blogposts to learn more about digital storytelling