Digital Storytelling vs. The Writing Process

Time4Writing lists five steps to the writing process: pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. In my previous English classes, I remember the teacher specifically taking us through each of these steps to help us achieve the best work possible. It helped map out our thoughts and narrow down what we were going to write about. The writing process is used in writing essays, short stories, or just paragraph writing. Anytime you want to get a story or thoughts onto paper in a professional manor, following the steps in the writing process is beneficial.

Digital Storytelling is very similar. As we've been working on this digital story over the past couple of weeks, we are going through each of these steps. We started out by brainstorming about what topics we would like to tell our story about. We then wrote out a draft of what we would include in our story. This week we are doing peer reviews with others' stories. We are giving feedback to what they are going to include in their story. We are then going to make a storyboard for the actual things/pictures we will include and what we will say in the story. Finally we will make our story and publish the final product.

So you can see how similar these two are. The main difference is one is in video story form and the other is in writing. Throughout this digital story project, I've really had fun mapping out my recent vacation to Disneyworld. It's been fun laying out pictures and putting them in video form. It's a new and different way to present a story instead of just writing. It makes the writing more fun.

As a math teacher, I'm always looking for ways to use this in my classroom. How would you see this working in a math class?