Digital stories are a quick meaningful way to get a message across. They are stories told using technology that include a combination of images and audio to tell a tale.

Digital stories have advantages in that you can get a consistent message across to many people, the story can be viewed at anytime and at any location. You can also get very creative with your story and key messages by using images and audio to engage your audience and draw them into your story.

Digital stories are a great way to get difficult concepts across, they are excellent for showing how different parts of an organisation or job task work together. They are also a great way to learn from other’s experiences without having to make the same mistakes.

So what does a good digital story look like?

Well first of all you can access the story on your computer but after that it can look like anything. Digital stories could have images and photos or they can contain movement, animations and videos or any combination of these. Good digital stories are focussed on a purpose and getting a message across.  They also use the same style through the whole story.

You can build a digital story on a variety of different platforms depending on how sophisticated you want to get. For example you could use Powerpoint, Slideshare, rapid elearning tools, or specialised animation tools such as Flipbooks, Videoscribe and Goanimate.

Before writing a digital story I often search the web to find inspiring examples. When I view good digital stories I ask myself, ‘what they are doing that makes the story successful’ and then ‘how can I incorporate these elements into elearning that I’m developing?’.

Here are a few digital stories that I’ve found inspiring, you can click on the links to view them. Please feel free to share in the comments below any other digital stories you have found inspiring.

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