Examples

In this section are a sample script, the corresponding digital story and information on where to find other sample digital stories to share with your class.

Here is a script that we have turned into a sample digital story. You can use this script and related digital story to introduce digital storytelling to your class.

Sample Script:

There once was a girl named Kara.

Kara loved to listen to music.
She also loved to play games.
Sometimes her friends would come over to Kara's house, and they would talk about school, sports, or the computer. Sometimes they would play make-believe.

Kara always had great ideas when they played make-believe. She would tell stories that would take them to faraway places, and nobody could make up a place like Kara. When Kara was around, the friends went:

  • On pirate ships
  • Under the ocean
  • And over the moon

Kara loved to pretend. Sometimes she was so busy pretending, she forgot to listen to her teacher, Miss Hoffman.

"Kara," Miss Hoffman would say, "You must pay attention to our lesson about the age of the dinosaurs. You will have a writing assignment about this later."

But Kara didn't like writing. She said, "Miss Hoffman, writing is just putting words on a page!"

Miss Hoffman said, "I think you might feel differently about this assignment. For this assignment, you'll be telling a digital story. You'll use the computer to demonstrate your point of view."

"Storytelling and computers?" Kara thought. "Those are two of my favorite things!"

Miss Hoffman told the students that their assignment was to imagine how the world would be different if dinosaurs still lived among us.

When Kara got the assignment, she went straight home and got to work on the computer. She opened up a movie making software. She wanted her story to look really cool, so she started playing with transitions.

She learned the fade
And the checkerboard
And the star

She found some neat pictures on the Internet, so she added those to her movie. She also used one of her favorite dinosaur videos and made that part of the project.

Kara added just about everything she could to her project, and when she was done, it looked so cool that she thought she was ready for Hollywood.

The next day, Kara showed her work to Miss Hoffman.

“This is pretty,” Miss Hoffman said, “But where’s the story? You didn’t tell me how the world would be different.”

“Well,” said Kara, “It’s just that there were so many neat things I could do, I guess I just forgot about the assignment.”

Miss Hoffman said, “A great digital story doesn't come from the computer, it comes from the story itself. Before you work on the story again, I want you to sit down and write out your ideas as a narrative making sure you focus on the important elements of a story.. Here are some important elements of a story.”

“Next,” Miss Hoffman said, “I’d like you to organize your story on this storyboard. Think about what images, sounds, music, and narrative would help illustrate your point of view.”

“Finally, after all of that is done and you’ve have a peer review your work every step of the way, then you can use the computer to tell your digital story.”

So Kara started writing. She enjoyed writing her ideas, because she knew that she would get to use the computer to bring them to life.

When she was done writing, her classmate edited Kara’s story.

Kara rewrote her story, and then organized it into a storyboard.

Then she found the media that illustrated her story.

Finally, she used the same movie editing software to put her digital story together.

“Wow,” Kara thought, “This is going a lot faster than when I just played with the computer, and my story looks amazing!”

When Kara turned in her story to Miss Hoffman, she was very proud of what she had created. Miss Hoffman was impressed, too. Using a rubric to evaluate her, Kara scored very well in the categories upon which they had agreed.

Miss Hoffman showed Kara’s parents her work during Parent-Teacher conferences, and her parents loved seeing what Kara had learned. Then, Miss Hoffman hosted a gallery day where students from other classrooms came to Miss Hoffman's room to see what all of the students created. When Kara showed her digital story, all of the other students clapped and told her what a good job she had done.

It wasn’t Hollywood, but Kara was still very proud.

If you are interested in viewing other sample digital stories with your class, please find some sites below where you can locate digital story examples online.