Digital Story Maker
Now have students visit the MediaSmarts Digital Story Maker using the link in the Digital Story Maker student chapter. Explain that they are going to use this tool to make their three-segment digital stories.
The digital story maker can be accessed on any device that has an internet browser such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari and so on.
Students can make an account with either their names and email addesses, or just a usernames. If they use their email addresses, they will be sent a confirmation link to that address. They must click it to activate the account. If they ever forget your password, a recovery email will be sent to that address. If you want students to use this method, it is recommended that you have them set up accounts a day before you do this activity, so that class time is not used waiting for emails to arrive and accounts to be activated.
If students use just a username, they will be logged in right away. There is no way to recover a lost password if they use this method, so they should make sure to record their usernames and passwords.
This is particularly important if you plan to deliver the Second Draft lesson, in which students revise a digital story project they made earlier in the course.
Go through the steps of using the tool with students:
Creating a digital story
To start making your digital story, they will need to click or tap “Start Here”:
Next, go through the instructions. Point out to students that they have already done a lot of this while planning their stories and making their story tables.
Students should then give your stories a name and click or tap “Start”:
Adding segments
Next, students add the audio and image for each segment. For the audio, they can use the story maker to record your narration or upload narration they made previously, such as with their phones. They can also leave a segment silent by choosing “No audio”.
They can either upload an image for each segment or choose one from the gallery.
Note to students that it is only possible to use still images in the digital story maker. Explain that this is intended to keep things simple while they are learning the format.
For both the audio and images, if students are using imported files they will have to identify under what right they are using them. Some sources of royalty-free and copyright-cleared images include Pixabay, Pexels and the Internet Archive. You can use the Council of Ministers of Education’s Fair Dealing Decision tool to determine whether your students can use other online sources for this project. For a more thorough explanation of Fair Dealing and Creative Commons, see the lesson Remixing Media or the article Fair Dealing for Media Education.
Choosing music
Once students have made at least three segments, they can choose their music. There are a limited range of music options. Have students listen to the options and click or tap the circle next to the title of the one they want:
Rendering and downloading
Once students have made at least three segments and chosen their music, they can render their videos. That turns the project into a video format that can be played in other apps and on other devices. To do that, they click or tap Render video.
Once the video is rendered, students will be able to download it onto their device by clicking or tapping Download video:
Use the Assessment rubric for digital story assignment if you are delivering this as a separate unit, or use the assessment rubric for the specific unit into which you are integrating it.
If you like, you can have students share the videos they made with the class.
For each video, ask students:
- Was the story clear?
- Did they understand the video maker’s point of view and why the story is important to them?
- Did the images, narration and music work together to make them feel a certain way?
Rendering turns a project file into a format that can be downloaded and played by others.