Reflections on a Digital Storytelling Project

This week I learned that digital storytelling is a lot more complicated than I originally thought. In order to create a successful digital story, you must engage in multiple roles.

The successful digital storyteller must be a producer, a writer, a director, and an editor. If you neglect any of these roles, than your final digital story product will lack in content and quality.

One way to help navigate the different roles of the digital storyteller is to work in a storytelling team. Working in a team will definitely alleviate the pressures of having to play multiple roles.

The Digital Storytelling Process:

This week, I worked with a team to create a digital story that highlighted a reading program at an imaginary high school. Our group wanted to create a video that introduced a year long program encouraging high school students to read books from YALSA’s 2016 Alex Awards. At the end of this reading program, students would vote for their favorite books and a school-wide party/celebration would be held.

That was the story arc, but we quickly realized that this project would entail much more work.

Once we identified what our digital story would be about, the next step was to compile images, write a script, and create a story board. We did all of this work remotely through the handy tools of Google Drive folders and Google Docs. Throughout the week, we used the chat function of our shared Google Doc and decided that in addition to introducing students to the proposed reading program, we would also have to develop short book-talks of each Alex Award title. We were very conscious of the amount of time required to book-talk several titles; therefore, we tried to limit each book-talk to 140 characters (similar to a Twitter Tweet). At the end of the week, we had A LOT of content. In retrospect, I think that we may have dreamed a little too big for a 3–4 minute digital story.

Once we had all of the preliminary work done for the digital story, it was time to put it all together into a tangible artifact. Our group began this process by importing all of our saved images (from Google Drive) into iMovie. We then consulted our story board as we arranged images into a coherent sequence. Next, we explored iMovie’s sound gallery and looked for audio clips that we could use in our video. At this point, I think that we may have gotten a little distracted with all of the sound options. We were also disappointed that we could not locate a generic “party” sound for the celebration part of our digital story. Our last steps in creating this digital story were to insert title and text slides, split images, added transitions, and, most importantly, add recorded audio. Most of these steps went pretty smoothly. Our only real hiccup during this process was the necessity to cut some of the content in our recorded script. We over prepared and had TONS of content that would not reasonably fit into a 3–4 minute video. This wasn’t too big of a deal as we quickly cut the supplementary material and moved on with our video production.

While the process of creating our digital story went pretty smoothly, I really wish that we would have had an additional 5–10 minutes to work on it. There was a piece of recorded content that we did not have time to record and add to the video. I believe that adding this recorded content would have been a nice way to wrap-up our digital story.

Forecasting My Future With Digital Storytelling:

I think that digital storytelling really has the potential to be a great advocacy tool for the library. It is a great way to engage stakeholders both visually and audibly. Through digital storytelling, we as librarians can quickly show what we are doing in the library and what its impact is for our patrons.

So, how do I see myself using digital storytelling in the future?

Provided I had the appropriate computers and accessories at my library branch, I could see myself hosting a digital storytelling program in which patrons learned how to use iMovie. This type of program would be great because patrons would learn about a new technology. In addition, I would be able to use these digital stories (with patron permission of course) to advocate for my library’s impact.

Another variation on the above idea would be for me to create a digital story highlighting library programming and uploading it online. I could also present it at outreach events, staff meetings, or a library board of directors meeting.

The possibilities for digital storytelling within a library setting are truly endless.