Digital Story Telling is a fun way 
to create stories, reports etc using images, voice and if you wish text too.
Magic ingredients
- A story to tell This could be for all sorts of reasons for education & training, reporting on an event or special occasion, sharing your thoughts
- Microphone Not too expensive (From $20 upwards). You might like to get a head set with mic attached to use for listening as well or you could just get a microphone on it's own.
- Digital photos (stills or video)
There are a variety of programs you can use to create digital stories but one quick and easy one I presently use is Photostory3 as it is simple and quick to use. It does have limitations but that makes it simple and easy to use. See http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx for details and a download source.
Examples
The ABC hosted a nation wide competition last year called 'Videolives' here are some of the winning entries in the 
Video Vault
What I love about the Bega Valley Community website is that you can share small files of digital stories.
I have some samples that I & my daughter Jasmine (aged 6) created, here in this community.
See Jasmine's story of her 
making her Guide promise.
My stories are about a team project The ACE Diamonds and about Virtual Conference rooms
There are many more cool digital stories... I will try to add other links over time.
Want to learn more?
If you really want to get stuck into creating your own digital stories you might like to try the following:
You can join the Digital Story Tellers network at http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/course/view.php?id=107 Here you can join for free with educators across the nation who are exploring the use of digital stories in education. This site contains lots of links and 'how to' resources.
"Digital storytelling is an engaging strategy for building learning materials; communicating with networks; displaying portfolios; as well as a captivating tool for capturing and sharing project, team and organisational knowledge." A quote from the DSNetwork
This is a work in progress... so watch out of this space in the future... Cheers Viv
