With the release of "Photo Story 3" freeware for Windows XP computers, our school division invited 16 staff members, each with up to four grade 4-6 students, to become engaged in a digital storytelling adventure as part of a Gifted and Talented initiative.  Many first-time users, after exploring the easy-to-use steps within "Photo Story 3" believed that creating a digital story can be a simple as:

However, after each of these teachers examined exemplary digital stories, identified the seven elements of digital stories, created and critiqued colleagues' presentations did they fully appreciate the hard work involved in creating their own digital stories. No longer did they focus on the software but rather they concentrated on reducing their story to a 3 - 5 minute celebration that contained  a point of view, dramatic question, emotional content, voice, sound track, economy and pacing. Once the teachers  "had walked the walk", they could now "talk the talk" and were so much better prepared to help their students explore and create meaningful digital stories.

To support educators, an extensive list of web resources was identified, compiled and shared with educators last Fall. This list now appears on the Supplementary Resources web page. This year, these supplementary resources were examined and reduced to a much more manageable and limited set of Basic Resources to help students and educators engage in the storytelling adventure.