craft of digital storytelling


what is digital storytelling?

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. 

Sophisticated digital stories can be interactive movies that include highly produced audio and visual effects, but a set of slides with corresponding narration or music constitutes a basic digital story. 

Digital stories can be instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective. 

The resources available to incorporate into a digital story are virtually limitless, giving the storyteller enormous creative latitude. 

Some learning theorists believe that as a pedagogical technique, storytelling can be effectively applied to nearly any subject. Constructing a narrative and communicating it effectively require the storyteller to think carefully about the topic and consider the audience’s perspective.

how does it work?

A digital story typically begins with a script. 


The storyteller then assembles rich media to support the ideas and emotions in that script, including music or other audio effects, personal or public domain images, animations or video, and other electronic elements. 


The storyteller pieces together and edits the digital story, creating a short movie, usually about two to four minutes long, in one of various file formats.

why is it significant?

People tell stories to teach beliefs and values to others.


The oral tradition of knowledge transfer and exchange has served as the basis for education since humans began teaching one another, and digital stories build on this model by incorporating rich, dynamic