“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” ― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

I read "Educational uses of Digital StoryTelling." “Today the use of digital storytelling is being practiced in neighborhood community centers, schools, libraries and businesses, by novice technology users to those with advanced skills. In the field of education, teachers and their students, from early childhood classrooms through graduate school, are using digital storytelling in many different content areas and across a wide range of grade levels." Digital storytelling makes it possible for anyone to become a creative storyteller. First, you must come up with a topic, conduct research depending on the topic chosen, write a script, and finally develop an interesting story. Your story can be combined with different types of multimedia including images, audio, computer-generated text, video clips, and music. I also read an article called "7 things you should know about Digital Storytelling."
“Digital stories can be instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective .Some learning theorists believe that as a pedagogical technique, storytelling can be effectively applied to nearly any subject.” This is quite interesting and also seems true. If you think about the content areas, it would exciting to have student try a cross-curricular story incorporating two of their favorite subject areas.

Emphasing on “writing a script” shifts the students away from trying to find images to illustrate their story. Students are usually allowed to choose their own topic which is extremely important and can  increase students interest and motivation in created such a story. Digital storytelling is nice because it can work with any grade level, so teachers can give as much support or as little support as needed. Using digital storytelling in an ESOL class can help give students confidence in their writing, as well as share their work with others. I would use digital storytelling with my students to help encourage them to be creative with writing and enjoy writing. Writing can be fun for almost anyone as long as you enjoy the topic. “Even with personal stories, we encourage students to try to integrate instructional elements tied to content so that the final version of the story has at least some connection to education.” This is obviously integral in using digital storytelling in your classroom. There always needs to be some educational tie to the students work. A good educational tie with digital storytelling, if your students are new to the language, would be having students develop their language through their writing and other students writing. "After the initial versions of the scripts are written, students should participate in small group “story circles” in which they share their ideas for their stories, read draft versions of their scripts and provide  constructive criticism and suggestions that can be used to improve the scripts and the overall plan for the final stories.” It is also essential that students understand the “writing process” at any age which includes: Pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.