Writing Your Story
Brainstorming and Writing
Finding Your Story
Brainstorming is a key element of the Digital Storytelling (DS) process. The story is the heart of the project, not the digital. The brainstorming session should allow students to explore many options and find a topic that excites them, particularly since they will be working with this topic for several weeks.
When you brainstorm, you'll want to look at two major questions:
1) What's the story you want to tell?
2) What do you think your story means?
What's the story you want to tell?
The start of this process can be daunting for students. We want them to find something they are excited about and want to explore. Have your students make a list of potential topics and then explore them more deeply - which sets a spark?
In one of my classes, students had to choose a future goal to write about. One student's list from Korea read:
-Find an accounting job
-Get married
-Buy a house
-Follow my dream of becoming a musician after I got kicked out of music school and gave up on my dream
We analyzed each topic, and I posed the question: which is the most interesting topic to explore?
What do you think your story means?
It's natural to tell a story as a sequence of events, but in this format, we want to know how this event impacted you.
For the purposes of this mini-course, you will create a Digital Story about being a teacher.
What story can you tell in just a few sentences? Take a look at a model of this project here: Sample 30-second project - "My Students"
Task 1: Go to our Lino page and brainstorm some ideas around the topic. Leave feedback for two of your classmates on their topic ideas.
Task 2: After you have received feedback, write your first draft. Remember, we are making a mini-Digital Story, so your story should be only one or two paragraphs.
If you would like feedback on your draft, you may submit it to jsadownick@albany.edu
