Digital storytelling is not a new idea. Joe Lambert and Dana Atchley helped create the digital storytelling movement in the late 1980s as cofounders of the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS), a nonprofit, community arts organization in Berkeley, California. Since the early 1990s, the CDS has provided training and assistance to people interested in creating and sharing their personal narratives. The CDS is also known for developing and disseminating the Seven Elements of Digital Storytelling (Table 1).

As Bernard Robin says, in the early days of digital storytelling, Lambert was impressed by how easily average people were able to “capture their story in a really powerful way in a relatively short amount of time for a relatively small amount of money”. Fast forward to today and one can see that what is new is that the tools needed for digital storytelling — computers, digital cameras, smart phones — have become increasingly more affordable and accessible. Also, a series of powerful, yet inexpensive software programs allow even novice computer users to become digital media producers and editors on a scale that was hardly imagined when Atchley and Lambert were first beginning their work. We are currently witnessing dramatic growth in the educational use of digital storytelling, as a convergence of affordable technologies interacts with a contemporary agenda for today’s classroom, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The convergence of digital storytelling in education (Robin, 2008).

Digital Storytelling also links perfectly with Constructionism, the theory of learning proposed by Seymour Papert, where children use technology as a medium of expression, and they construct knowledge in their minds while building something through technology (a robot, a digital story, etc.).

Following the model proposed by Papert, Mitch Resnick proposes a creative thinking spiral (Figure 2) that also fits perfectly with the principles of digital storytelling when we let children collaboratively create their stories in a playful way.

Figure 2. Creative Thinking Spiral  (Resnick, 2007).