Digital Storytelling by Alyssa

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One of the best memories that I have from visiting the library is story time. I was fortunate to have a wonderful librarian at our elementary school who could read books like no one’s business. She would change her voices for the characters, ask questions to keep us engaged, and make sure that all of us could see the pictures before turning the page. Even better, was when she didn’t read from a book at all, but told stories using props like a felt board, finger puppets, and printed characters on popsicle sticks. 

Flash forward a couple decades and you will find that technology has found its way into every aspect of a student’s life, including the library. Even though I personally am not a fan of all the tech, I have to say that it has been a huge relief during this last year of distance learning, especially for librarians! With the help of presentation tools, discussed in my last post, librarians at schools without children present could still put together lessons and create digital stories to share online. 

Digital storytelling, as the ALA describes it, is simply storytelling using any media other than paper (American Library Association). It can be any story; a popular fairytale, a recreation of a book, or a personal one. Additionally, it can be an informational story about a person, place, or topic. No matter the tale, software like PowerPoint and iMovie has made it really easy to tell it in a new way. There are many tutorials online
, like this one from Megan Grady, showing how to create a digital story using PowerPoint. 

Whatever format is used, story time is so important to continue for kids. My third grader found distance learning to be hard, but looked forward to his scheduled library time Monday afternoons. Even if his librarian wasn’t live streaming, there was still a digital story or recording of her reading a book for him to watch. This is why it is important for librarians to know about digital storytelling, because even in an electronic world, kids appreciate the comfort of story time. 

Works Cited

American Library Association. 14 February 2018. “Keeping Up With...Digital Storytelling.” Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/keeping_up_with/storytelling. Document ID: aba96c53-9402-406e-9d85-4220185403b4

Grady, Megan. 4 March 2016. Digital Storytelling with PowerPoint. [Video Film]. Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2MbBSc6930