Welcome!
Welcome to Macalester College’s Digital Storytelling resource site.
What can I find here?
Macalester’s Digital Storytelling website exists to encourage and support digital storytelling in liberal arts settings, so take what you need and let us know if you can’t find what you’re looking for. This site includes:
- Links to diverse libraries of sample digital stories
- Links to scholarly literature related to digital storytelling and digital literacies
- Curriculum support including suggested readings, downloadable sample assignments, and links to digital storytelling tools
- Approaches to assessment and sample rubrics
- Information on ADA compliancy and digital storytelling
- Information on Fair Use, Copyright, and Creative Commons
- Links to other useful Digital Storytelling websites
What is Digital Storytelling?
Digital storytelling at its most basic core is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories. There are a wealth of other terms used to describe this practice, such as digital documentaries, computer-based narratives, digital essays, electronic memoirs, interactive storytelling, etc.; but in general, they all revolve around the idea of combining the art of telling stories with a variety of multimedia, including graphics, audio, video, and Web publishing.
As with traditional storytelling, most digital stories focus on a specific topic and contain a particular point of view. However, as the name implies, digital stories usually contain some mixture of computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips, and/or music. Digital stories can vary in length, but most of the stories used in education typically last between 2 and 10 minutes. The topics used in digital storytelling range from personal tales to the recounting of historical events, from exploring life in one’s own community to the search for life in other corners of the universe, and literally, everything in between.
Still have questions? Check out this FAQ page on Digital Storytelling.
Community Engaged Digital Storytelling at Macalester
Here is a sample of a student digital story that weaves oral histories from Rondo community members with historic images of the Rondo neighborhood, a prominent African-American community in the City of Saint Paul, Minnesota that was nearly destroyed by the construction of highway I-94 in the 1960s.
