Don't enable the technophile at the expense of the storyteller...

Excerpted from Jason's new book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity...

Revelation #7: Don't enable the technophile at the expense of the storyteller.

To make sure I didn't enable the technophile at the expense of the storyteller I began incorporating storytelling basics into every class in which telling a story was a focus. I even brought in an oral storyteller to help my students learn how to plan, write and tell stories in front of people in traditional fashion.

I then helped my students transition from oral to digital stories, applying the tools in service of the story rather than vice versa. And lo, the quality of my students' digital stories rose dramatically. A result of this discovery is that I have included oral storytelling in my digital storytelling workshops whenever possible ever since.