Digital+Storytelling

Telling a story is a powerful way to communicate with others. Think about those moments when you would share a story about yourself with your friends and how everyone of them is focused and waiting on the next word to come out of your mouth. And when this storytelling is combined with a set of powerful digital tools it becomes a truly authentic learning experience that helps students develop a wide range of intellectual skills.


 * Here some of the pluses of digital storytelling in education : **


 * It develops creativity and critical thinking
 * Students who are shy or afraid to talk in class get a chance to speak out their minds
 * It empowers students voice to deliver rich, deep message that is capable of conveying a powerful message.
 * It helps students explore the meaning of their own experience, give value to it, and communicate that experience with others.
 * It promotes the notions of life long learning and independent learning
 * It develops students communicative skills
 * It is a reflective process that helps students reflect upon their learning and find deep connections with the subject matter of a course or with an out-of-class experience.
 * It fosters students sense of individuality
 * It also gives students an opportunity to experiment with self-representation and establish their identity
 * Students creating digital stories develop proficiency with multimedia applications

There are actually several tools to create a digital story online but for educational purposes I have meticulously selected some of the best ones available online and for free. But before you start exploring the list make sure to check out these three tools to develop creativity in your Students Writing. .


 * Here is the list of some of the best free digital storytelling tools for school: **


 * 1- ZimmerTwins**



It is all about **creative storytelling.** ZimmerTwins is a **web2.0 tool** that allows **students** to give vent to their imaginative powers and exercise their storytelling **skills** from early stages to advances ones.


 * 2- Digital Story Telling in The Classroom**



This section provides resources and materials for teachers to use with their students in storytelling. It helps students personalize their learning and perform better. Students can use these materials to create a movie or interactive slideshow to tell their stories.


 * 3- Story Bird**



This is an awesome website that allows students and teachers to create short art inspired stories to read, share or print out.


 * 4- Someries**



Someries is a fantastic **storytelling site**. It has a continuous flow of new stories, read aloud by kids. The stories are all made by kids and for kids, learners of English can benefit a lot from this site too. Some of the videos in Someries are subtitled so that kids can both read and listen to what they read.


 * 5- PicLits**

This is another awesome website where students can choose a picture and start drawing or writing a text on it to create a story.


 * 6- Generator**



This is a creative studio space where students explore the moving image and create their own digital stories to share with others.


 * 7- Capzles**

This is where you and your students can create rich multimedia stories with videos, photos, music, blogs and documents. It is really awesome.


 * 8- Slidestory**



This is a free digital story telling tool that students can use to combine sharing pictures and narration to create awesome presentations and stories to share with others.


 * 9- Domo Animate**



This is one of the best tools online for digital story telling. It allows students to create animated stories and provides them with a wide variety of background and characters to use.


 * 10- Animoto**



This is also a very popular tool but its paid versions offer much more than its free basic plan that only allows for creating 30 second videos. These videos can combine images, songs, and text.


 * 11- Smilebox**



This is a great website that provides hundreds of customizable designs for students and teachers to create their own stories that can comprise photos, videos, words and music.


 * 12- Make Belief Comix**



As its name suggests, this tool allows users to create stories out of comic strips and share them with others The process is very easy to use and above all student friendly


 * 13- Creaza**



Creaza has a nice tool called Cartoonist where students can create their own stories using cartoonic characters. Watch the video in there to learn how to use it.


 * 14- Pixton**



This is a tool that lets users create stories out of cartoons and provided characters. It is so much fun and students will definitely love it.

15- Voice Thread



This is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows users to navigate slides and create their own stories.

16- Comic master



This is a great website that allows users to create graphic novels and stories to share with others. It provides everything from templates to sharing tools, you just put in your ideas and creativity.


 * 17- Picture Book Maker**



As its name suggests, this tools lets you create your very own children's book using a set of beautiful templates and pages.


 * 18- Bubblr**



This is a tool to help you create comic strips using photos from Flickr.com. Just search for the pictures you want and then add your bubbles.


 * 19- Pinball**



This is another great website for students and teachers to create digital stories. It has a set of tools to fire out ideas, mix them, and make quick decisions.


 * 20- Mapskip**



This website features several stories based on locations on Google map. The purpose is to create a weave of stories about the places in our lives. Users can join in for free and start marking up places in Google Maps with their own stories and photos. They can also browse each others' stories and can rate and discuss them.


 * 21- ZooBurst**



This is another great digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D pop-up books. It has two plans one is basic and free and the other is paid and has more advanced features.

If you think I have missed any important storytelling tool here then please share it with us in the comment form below.

This list a work done by Med Kharbach for Educational Technology and Mobile Learning.

I have added the following websites to his list.

22. [|Kerpoof]



23. [|Xtranormal]

Choose characters and give them dialogue and actions to tell a story through conversation or a solo monologue.

24. [|beeclipedu]

Another digital scrap-booking site. You can also make picture collages.

25. [|Mixbook]



This is another digital scrap-booking tool. It's designed to create your own personalized photo books, calendars, invitiations, etc. However, using the process to create a photo book, you can make a cool digital book that can be read online and even embed into other sites.

26. [|Tikatok]