Resources forDigital Movie Projects

Student Scaffolding

Technical Support

General Resources

  • Ideas for Digital Storytelling Across the Curriculum
  • JewelBeat Royalty Free Production Music- very high quality music tracks and sound effects that can be used in teacher and student productions royalty free. The music can also be looped to enable seamless, continuous play throughout a video. Free samples are available for download, although many more styles of music and sound effects are available for purchase.
  • Royalty-free image collections
    • stock.xchng - More than 350,000 free photo images, searchable.
    • dreamstime - Free section of a very large photo images archive. Excellent quality images.
    • morgueFile - More than 200,000 free photo images, searchable in several ways, including by color and topic.
    • WorldImages - About 75,000 international images, well-organized by content areas and searchable.
    • Image*After - Smaller collection, searchable in several ways, including by color and by general characteristics.
    • freerange - Smaller collection, but all free as long as they are used for nonprofit purposes. Searchable.
    • StockVault - Smaller collection; Web site where photographers share images. Open to all to download.
    • FreeFoto - Medium-sized collection, very good quality photos. Link back to the site and attribution required for photo use.
    • FreeDigitalPhotos - Smaller collection; comparatively new site. Higher resolution versions for fee; smaller for free.

Where to publish your digital stories

  • Ourmedia.org is an open-sources project that provides, “free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text, or software.” The only condition for using ourmedia.org is that all media must be shown to the global world. Visitors can view other people’s work including digital stories, blogs, music, forums, text, podcasts, and more.
  • Google Video is a free video hosting site. Individuals can submit videos of any size or length to the site using the Google Video Upload Program. Submitting a video does not guarantee that it will be posted. The site offers a wide assortment of available videos.
  • TeacherTube Student Products Channel is devoted solely to student-generated video content.

Movie-making contests

  • DigiTalkies (Northwest Council for Computer Education) is an annual movie-making contest for K-12 students that uses TeacherTube as a platform for posting entries. Movies must be less than three minutes, but an individual may submit as many entries as they wish. Students are judged according to others in their age group and there are six different categories: Create a Public Service Announcement, Sell Me Something, Create an Original Music Video, Tell Me a Story, A day in the life … , Animated.
  • Visfest (Kent, WA School District) is an annual movie-making contest for K-12 students in the Kent School District. There is a different theme every year and the Web site gives detailed instructions for how to brainstorm a story from a prompt.
  • Digital Storytelling (Modesto City Schools, CA) is an interactive site for an annual movie-making contest for K-12 students in Modesto, CA. Covers the brainstorming process and introduces a number of video editing software options. The site also offers movie storytelling lesson plans.
  • Island Movie (Hawaii Department of Education) is a digital storytelling contest open to all Hawaiian students. There are three categories (Teach Me Something, Tell Me a Story, Environmental Concerns and Social Issues) and each category is divided into a division for elementary, middle, and high school students. Past winners and honorable mention videos since 2003 are available for viewing on the site.

Digital Storytelling Projects and Sites

  • The Elements of Digital Storytelling site does an excellent job of explaining the fundamentals of multimedia development. This site is a valuable guide for understanding the taxonomy of digital storytelling. This site also offers an analysis of current practices, a clearinghouse of effects research, a showcase of innovative story forms, and includes a forum for discussion.
  • This ElectronicPortfolio site offers a number of great resources for digital storytelling. Among its features is a “tour of the tools” which details useful software and hardware for audio, image, and video editing on both Mac and PC platforms. The FAQ section is especially helpful in answering your questions. Teachers will love the simple and effective lesson plans on how to prepare a digital storytelling workshop.
  • Meg’s Digital Storytelling Resources site contains an excellent collection of digital story sites and examples. Meg also offers exciting resources on blogs and information on her extensive presentations including keynotes speeches, breakouts, workshops, and classroom guidance.
  • This simple but useful web page includes “how to” information on creating digital stories, links to other digital story resources, and a significant collection of sample stories. Also offered are three sample grading rubrics for teachers to access their students’ work.
  • The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling site is a comprehensive website that includes simple and understandable information on creating digital stories from beginning to end. In its follow-along-style, this site will walk you through creating goals and objectives, getting started, looking at examples and tools, creating your story, and finally to creating grading rubrics. The site also offers a list of additional resources.
  • The Scott County, Kentucky's website on digital storytelling is an exceptional collection of resources, tips, tools, and FAQs for creating digital stories. Most impressive is this site’s extensive and amazing library of teacher and student-made productions. http://www.teachingteachers.com/story.htm This site details five distinct categories of digital storytelling: overview, storytelling, planning, creating, and delivering. In lesson-plan style, each section provides detailed information and resources for learners to follow to the next step.
  • DigiTales’ stylish and well-designed site details digital story-making tools for Macs, PCs, voiceovers, and even ones just for kids. Its resources include articles, books, image galleries, sound and music sources, eLearning tutorials, workshop possibilities, and sample stories.
  • The First Monday site is a theoretical paper discussing how collaborative and group-based activities can promote positive student behavior. Specifically, the author, “hypothesizes that online forums and virtual communities, including message boards, Weblogs and instant messaging software (IM), allow children important spaces to share ideas and feelings, discuss issues and projects, ask and answer each other’s questions, and promote a prosocial spirit.
  • Tech Head Stories contains a large collection of links to various digital storytelling resources. The site also provides useful information about information design, content strategy, and digital ephemera. Story links are categorized into key digital, educational programs, research, tools, story sites, archives, electronic games, interactive environments, memorial journals, interactive and hypertextual fiction, corporate, photo journals, personal journals, travel journals, role-playing journals, teenage journals, community projects, online comics, animation, tests, and more.
  • Helen Graham gives tips about how you can preserve your family’s heritage by recording family members’ oral history.
  • Scott County Schools (Kentucky) Success Story - Scott County Schools reports on their “yearlong exploration of the writing process,” which asked students from elementary, middle, and high schools to create digital story versions of their writings. The exceptional success of this program continues to spur more teachers to implement the program in their classrooms. Each year the district conducts a Digital Storytelling Festival to celebrate and watch the students’ stories.
  • Telling Their Stories: Oral History Archives Project ”Read Watch Listen” to this amazing site that captures the personal stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees, WWII Camp liberators, and Japanese internees. All interviews were conducted by high school students who have translated the stories into segmented text and video clips.
  • Heirloom Stories - Who better to tell stories than those who have lived to see the most. This site inspires older generations to record their stories so that in hundreds of years people with their genes will be able to read their thoughts. The site provides sample stories, writing tips, and online publication services. Visitors can subscribe to the Harnessmaker's Son Newsletter and receive a chapter from the author’s own story every month by e-mail.
  • Creative Narrations (Boston) This site features numerous narrative digital stories ranging from personal life accounts, community conversations, and explorations of history. The sample videos show how videos can be used for education, outreach, and fundraising. The site also provides information about custom-made workshops for those who would like hands-on training.
  • Digital Storytelling Finds its Place in the Classroom - Tom Banaszewski details step-by-step how he inspired his fourth and fifth grade students to find fun in writing. In Project Place, he asked his students to write about a place they felt comfortable and safe. Pictures were added and each student created their own digital story about their special place. Place Project demonstrates “how technology can be instrumental in the perennial student struggle to find voice, confidence, and structure in their writing.” The site also features wonderful iMovie tips created just for teachers.
  • Visible Knowledge Project highlights digital story resources you can find online. The categories include how to, links to other resources on digital stories, sample stories, and sample grading rubrics.
  • Kids’ Vid is an “instructional website to help students and teachers use video production in class to support project based learning.” Resources include scripting, editing, making the video and details about showing your work. The site also hosts a digital story competition for K-12 students.
  • Digital Stories by Students and Teachers features a showcase of digital stories created by students and teachers. The three types of videos are educational, fiction, and nonfiction. A wonderful resource section details tools for editing video, audio, and photos. Visitors can also submit their own stories.
  • Capture Wales Digital Storytelling - The idea of this site is to showcase the splendor of Wales. Videos created by people from Wales during a six day workshop are presented. A select number of videos are aired on BBC television. Workshop information is provided.
  • The Center for Digital Story Telling is a non-profit training and consulting organization dedicated to help individuals and companies create digital stories through their custom workshops. The workshops’ aim is to teach participants how to create a 3-5 minute digital story. The context of their workshops covers education, oral and local history, faculty and staff development, K-12 program curricula, and more.
  • Fraynework Digital Storytelling is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating digital stories about indigenous people around the globe in an effort to promote education and compassion. Fraynework produces CD-ROMs, interactive websites, videos, and more. The organization also offers consultation and training services.
  • Digital Family Stories is a wonderful resource website dedicated to preserving family history. Resources available include information on digital equipment, software vendors, production tools (text, graphic, movie, & web editors categorized by user level), and publication media.
  • Telling Lives - England BBC Digital Storytelling explores the uniqueness of its regions by hosting a large collection of stories created by and for the people of the UK. The stories are produced in workshops available around the country. Finished works can be viewed on the web and on BBC television.
  • These Stories in These Pictures: An Easy Guide to Storytelling from the Pictures We Collect in Our Lives - The Canadian Film Centre puts everything you want to know about creating a storyline in one place. This simple and marvelous website explains how to create a true or fictional story using your photo collection. Wonder elements of this website include structural advice and personal touches that you can incorporate into your story. Examples include expectation reversal, using metaphoric references, and effective pacing.
  • Dana Atchley's Next Exit provides consulting and storytelling workshops to corporations and senior level executives helping them to tell their stories by applying the rich media techniques of digital storytelling called emotional brand-building.” http://www.capturinglifestories.com/ Title: America's Life Stories This site features the Capturing Life's Stories Biography Kit to record your own autobiography or to give as a gift. Each kit contains: a 24-page instruction booklet for creating an audio autobiography, three one-hour audio cassettes, tips for creating a high quality recording, interviewing tips, and over 200 interview questions to ignite memories.
  • The Dostal Project is a wonderful example of family recorded history. See how one man chronicled his family history from his great-great grandparents to himself. The site includes written transcripts and 15 short stories, each including narration and dozens of photographs.
  • StoryCorps seeks to record history from everyday people. This site features a large collection of audio stories (mp3s). Selected interviews are also broadcast each Friday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition.
  • Photobus: Daniel Meadows Adventures in Documentary, 1973-2004 - This site features wonderful and engaging examples of digital storytelling. Examples include a biography of the author’s parents and local history. Included is a comprehensive digital story tutorial with many helpful resources and information.
  • Kent, WA VisFest features an in-depth overview of using various kinds of technology in K-12 classrooms, including a review of digital storytelling techniques and practical tips.
  • Edutopia Video Library features hundreds of videos created in K-12 classrooms, as well as tools for teachers on technology integration, assessing technology integration, and curriculum guides.
  • Digital Storytelling Cookbook uses a cookbook metaphor to explain digital storytelling and guide users through the movie-creation process.
  • Dr. Alice Christie’s Digital Media Resources for Teachers offers an extensive list of links for videos made in K-12 classrooms, tips and techniques, planning and assessment, professional development, free online resources, and various articles.
  • The Center for Digital Storytelling provides resources and promotes workshops for the proliferation of storytelling through video. It is devoted to helping people of all ages tell their stories through new media. The Center is particularly concerned with writing development and helping people learn to tell their stories in a profound way.
  • Principles and Methods from the Center for Digital Storytelling this page outlines five key points of storytelling -- everyone has a powerful story, listening is important, there is no formula for a great story, creativity is a human activity, and fusing technology and storytelling is very powerful.
  • Tech Head Stories offers links to other digital storytelling Web sites, digital storytelling educational programs, books and research about digital storytelling, tools and resources, and MANY examples of how media can be used to tell stories.