Your Digital Story

Explain to students that it can also be helpful to give your digital story a structure, especially when you’re making your first one.

One simple structure has three parts: a goal, a challenge, and a resolution.

In a simple digital story, like the ones they’ll be making to start off, each of these might be a single segment.

• The goal is the place they’re trying to get to in the story. It might be something they want or a problem that they need to solve.
• Next is the challenge: what is making it hard to reach the goal? What might have happened that made things more difficult?
• Last is the resolution. What did you do to overcome the challenge and reach the goal? It doesn’t have to be a happy ending! It might be something you’re still doing – or it might be something that didn’t work in the end.

Brainstorming a structure can also start from the resolution and work backwards: What challenge did they have to overcome? Why did they face that challenge?

Remind students that this is just a simple structure to get them started. They don’t have to follow this structure if it doesn’t make sense for their story, and they can adapt it as well. For instance, if they were telling your “story” to advocate for a cause or an issue, the “resolution” might be what they want your audience to do after they watch.

Now have students make simple outline using the tool in the Your digital story student chapter. (If you choose, you can have them do this in pairs or small groups.)