Computers and Composition 25 (2008) 449–452

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Book review

Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways toLiteracy, Learning, and Creativity, Jason Ohler. Corwin Press,

Thousand Oaks, CA (2008). 228 pp

Sandra Raymond ∗

Department of English, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA

I am in the process of developing a new curriculum for one of the courses in our secondaryteacher education program. It will focus on the use of technology in the classroom to makesure that my institution meets NCATE standards for technology and media literacy put forthby NCTE. I will be teaching two sections of this new technology course, and while I havesome experience with digital technology, I am not as comfortable with it as I should be toteach a class on it.

Jason Ohler’s book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy,Learning, and Creativity, has been of great help in increasing my comfort level with incor-porating technology into the secondary teacher education program. It is a must-read for anyteacher in the position of wanting to upgrade her knowledge of classroom technology. Ohler’sbook not only presents a contemporary, fresh, and relevant approach to teaching technology,but also creates a compelling narrative of the importance of storytelling in the curriculum andhow students and teachers can be transformed by learning the art of storytelling. Ohler’s bookis remarkably up-to-date; he lays out the various components of storytelling in a way that isclear and accessible; and he emphasizes that his approach is adaptable to almost any type ofhardware and software.

In the preface Ohler states, “I wrote this book so that it could be used by any teacher,regardless of technical experience, who wants help using technology effectively, creatively,and wisely in the classroom” (p. ix). Ohler points out that the book is primarily for elementaryand secondary teachers at most grade levels in most content areas, incorporating informationabout dealing with parents and principals. As a college teacher, I would argue that Ohler’sbook would also be useful to those who teach college composition (I plan on using it in acollege class), teacher preparation, or technology courses of any kind.

Readers of this book, both teachers and students alike, will benefit from his clear, straight-forward, and highly organized approach. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom is divided intothree parts. Part I is an overview of storytelling and new media in the context of education. Part

∗ ∗ Tel.: +1 928 523 0951.∗ Email address: sandra.raymond@nau.edu.

8755-4615/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.compcom.2008.04.010

450 Book review / Computers and Composition 25 (2008) 449–452

II focuses completely on the components of storytelling, storytelling structure, and teachingstudents to brainstorm, map, and create compelling stories. Part III moves on to discuss howdigital media technology plays a roll in teaching students to become storytellers.

In Chapters 1 and 2 of Part I, Ohler discusses his own evolving interest in digital story-telling, going back to the early 1980s when he was teaching his students BASIC programminglanguage. He then moves on to emphasize the importance of storytelling and, in doing so,describes a series of student-created projects using the digital storytelling techniques he out-lines in his books. Because these projects are each summarized in a single paragraph of printtext, they lose the power, scope, and originality of the digital creations. The reader cannot movethrough the digital stories but is left to imagine them unfold without experiencing the powerof the visual images, music, and sound (demonstrating the limitation of print textbooks!).However, the examples do illustrate how the projects can be used with a wide range of agelevels to cover various types of assignments and different subject matter and to solve differentand complex curricular problems.

What, exactly, does a digital story look like? Ohler provides an answer to this question inChapter 2, where he emphasizes the wonderful simplicity of his approach. He writes, “Theuse of still images with voice-over narration, and the exclusion of video material, is a commonformat for digital stories for a number of reasons, including simplicity and low cost” (p. 30).Later on in the book, in Part III, Ohler describes how this type of digital story can be createdusing nothing more than Power Point. However, he also allows for the possibility of elaborateproductions involving keyboards, movie cameras, green screens (to allow the insertion ofany kind of background), and sophisticated editing equipment. Because of the numerouspossibilities outlined by Ohler, his book is directed not only at the teacher who is a novicedigital storyteller and who has done nothing more than put together slide shows and PowerPoint presentations, but also at the technology guru teaching a class in digital filmmaking.The common theme that runs throughout the book and holds these two opposite extremes ofexperience together is the emphasis on the importance of storytelling itself. He argues thatwhile a good story can exist without digital technology, the reverse is never true: without agood story, the digital production is meaningless.

In Chapters 3 and 4, Ohler places digital storytelling within the context of education andassessment. He goes into detail about how a digital storytelling curriculum can be used tomeet academic standards for the English/Language Arts (ELA). ELA standards that can bemet with digital storytelling include: writing, prewriting, outlining, planning, narration, editing,listening, speaking, and use of figurative language (among others). He also emphasizes theimportance of meeting standards for technology, media literacy, and critical thinking. I foundthis to be important advice after the English Education program at my institution decided totake a closer look at how standards are being met, only to see a need for more emphasis on thesevery standards. Ohler’s book helps teachers make decisions about how much digital storytellingto include in the curriculum and how to do this while still meeting ELA standards and havinghigh expectations for the quality of student work. I can now point to specific aspects of mycourse that cover not only technology standards but those for listening, speaking, viewing, andpresenting, as well as media literacy. Often times these standards are not covered by traditionalapproaches to teaching literature and writing, which makes a digital storytelling curriculumnot only relevant, but in some cases imperative.

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How does this approach fit into a composition classroom? In Chapter 3, Ohler writes “Whiledigital stories are typically viewed as an event on a computer screen, written work provides thefoundation and blueprint needed to give them life” (p. 49). Ohler’s emphasis on the importanceof writing, and high standards for writing, revising, and editing that he sets for his students setthis book apart from many other approaches to using technology in the classroom. He argues,“Writing for digital media projects compels students to focus on the use of language in waysthat they don’t necessarily focus on when writing is the only final product. Because digitalstories often employ spoken narrative, students get to hear what their writing sounds like byrecording it and listening to it as many times as they like. It is not uncommon for studentswho are crafting a short narrative to labor over phrases that don’t sound quite right” (p. 51).My personal experience in the classroom has reinforced this argument. When I taught at thesecondary level, my students put much more time and energy into writing scripts for the playsthey performed and the videos they filmed (using an old-fashioned video camera and VHStapes) than they did writing essays and research papers.

Ohler puts words to students’ enthusiasm for being more comfortable with a storytellingapproach to communication. Ohler writes, “Outside the academic arena, students engage withnew media because they enjoy it and because it has great practical value to them as commu-nicators. Digital media extends the hours of the school hallway, provides a collective canvasfor emerging artists, and puts young people at the helm of a culture creation engine that isconstantly surprising all of us with its potential” (p. 52). Students will play with this newmedia whether we teach it in our classes or not, but if the new media can help them composepowerful texts that they can share with real audiences, we can help them negotiate a widercircle of discourse communities.

In addition to giving students an outlet for expression, or the motivation to improve theirwriting skills, digital storytelling helps teach student to understand persuasion and teachesthem to think critically about how the media uses storytelling to influence audiences andconsumers. Ohler points out in Chapter 1 that “. . .until students become persuaders themselves,the persuasion of media remains hidden to them” (p. 12). This is especially true once studentsbecome aware of the power of editing and how the juxtaposition of certain images, or imageswith voice-over and/or music, can elicit a powerful emotional response. Once students beginplaying with this in the classroom, they also begin to see it in the world around them, particularlyin the advertising messages that bombard them from the television.

Ohler devotes Part II, consisting of Chapters 5 through 9, to storytelling structure. He drawson a variety of theories and fields, beginning with a discussion of Aristotle’s Poetics andmoving past Joseph Campbell’s concept of the Hero’s Journey to a discussion of indigenousstorytelling. Throughout this section, Ohler makes obvious his love of stories and the powerof teaching students to look for stories in their everyday lives and experiences. He teachesstudents to brainstorm and organize their stories through the techniques of storyboarding andstory mapping. This section, including the history and theory of storytelling, can be used on itsown or integrated with technology. The exercises he presents on brainstorming and mappingstories would work with traditional paper-and-pencil activities as well as in computer-centeredclassrooms.

The “how to” of digital storytelling is presented in Part III, particularly in Chapters 11through 13. Focusing on the details of how to produce and present digital stories, Ohler

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includes discussions of software and equipment along with advice on troubleshooting the useof these resources. Ohler reassures teachers that anyone can create a digital story. He breaksdown the media production process into a series of five phases that are easy to understand andfollow. He doesn’t walk the reader through any specific piece of software, and although hementions programs such as iMovie, Movie Maker, and Power Point, he only points them outas examples of specific software applications, making sure to point out that the principles ofdigital storytelling don’t rely on any of these specific applications.

Chapter 14 addresses the concept of media grammar. This is a key chapter in helping teachersfigure out a way to assess digital projects. Ohler proposes a list of assessment traits that canbe considered during holistic assessment or incorporated into a rubric. Different criteria herecommends evaluating include: a clear, focused picture; pacing and inflection in the voice-over narration; and appropriate music choices. While he explains and defends his selectionof these criteria, he does not prescribe them and resists the temptation to provide a formulaor template for assessing digital projects. The open-endedness of his approach is what makesthis book adaptable to many teaching situations.

For teachers concerned about copyright issues, Chapter 15 is a brief summary of copyrightrules, including Fair Use copyright, use of citations, getting permission and providing com-pensation, and the Creative Commons copyright license. Ohler focuses specifically on theseissues as they apply to educators and their students in making digital stories. This chapter doesa fantastic job of bringing to light important information without providing more informationthan is needed and without confusing the reader with legalese.

I recommend Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy,Learning, and Creativity because Ohler’s approach is specific enough for the novice digi-tal storyteller, while flexible enough for teachers who are already familiar with this way ofincorporating technology in the ancient art of storytelling. He is always encouraging, nevercondescending to his readers, and he has no qualms about pointing to both the benefits andthe drawbacks of using computer technology in the classroom. His philosophy of digital sto-rytelling puts the story front and center; he does not allow his students to get away withdisguising their lack of effort with the bells and whistles that digital storytelling can provide.His writing-centered approach to digital storytelling makes this book perfect for any sec-ondary ELA teacher or college composition instructor interested in updating and expandingtheir approach to teaching writing, research, rhetoric, composition, and creative expression.