Storytelling With Purpose: Digital Projects to Ignite Student Curiosity

"Teaching is the most important profession in any democracy. Michael Hernandez has written a wonderful book that anchors storytelling in the classroom and provides a highly readable and hugely helpful guide for teachers, who each day are taking students on an intellectual journey that is critical to the well-being of our country." — Ken Burns

"Just in time, this is a pedagogical and practical guide for any educator ready to take learning to a new level." — Seth Godin

Learn how to embrace the power of digital storytelling with your students, and reframe the learning process as one based on curiosity, purpose and joy.

Storytelling enables us to make sense of the world and bring order to our thinking. Now more than ever, students are hungry for authentic learning experiences that offer opportunities to make an impact beyond the classroom. With practical advice and examples of how to plan, create, publish and assess student stories, this book offers a fresh approach to digital storytelling. And it includes evidence-based, classroom-tested guidance on how to provide students with the tools and structure they need to develop a mindset of curiosity, agency and purpose.

Establishing digital storytelling as a framework for learning rather than a separate add-on project or a way to record work being done in other subject areas, the book covers various types of digital storytelling — from infographics and social media posts to podcasts and video documentaries — and demonstrates how to choose the best ways to incorporate digital storytelling into curricula.

Student examples and teacher case studies provide inspiration on how to integrate the practice into classrooms of all grade levels and subject areas.

The book:
• Shows how to create uncheatable assessments through student-created story projects
• Helps educators create meaningful learning experiences by integrating edtech tools and storytelling into their curriculum.
• Shows how storytelling can help students activate higher-level thinking to conduct research, process ideas and information, and share the synthesis of these ideas with an audience.
• Illustrates how digital storytelling can help develop a mindset of collaboration, mental agility and resilience.
• Presents student examples, teacher case studies and sample lessons to demonstrate how to integrate student stories into curriculum in authentic ways.
• Offers flexibility, through sample projects that vary in degree of difficulty, so teachers can choose the best option based on their resources and unique situation.

More than a practical edtech guide, this book explores the why behind digital storytelling as much as the how. Educators will learn how to help students explore cultural and historical context, develop social emotional resiliency, and develop the skills they need to become engaged global citizens.