Ed Madison and colleagues at the UO School of Journalism and Communication are helping high school teachers dive into the digital storytelling age.

Madison led the development of a new Digital Skills Workshop that shows teachers how to use digital storytelling to meet new Common Core State Standards for English instruction as well as media and technology. Madison recently wrote about the project for MediaShift, a website specializing on the intersection of media and technology and run by the Public Broadcasting Service, PBS.

The video workshop offers a new model for instruction that uses tutorials along with documentary storytelling to show teachers how to use technology to meet learning goals in the new standards. The video was created during a week-long journalism workshop for a group of students at Roosevelt High School in Portland.

Madison notes that the new standards for English instruction call for a shift toward greater use of nonfiction and also stress media fluency and technology skills. Teaching digital storytelling can be an effective way to meet the new standards as well as advance journalism education, he said.

In a story on the journalism school website, Madison said the program is getting good reviews.

 “We’re already hearing from teachers that after watching the modules they are less intimidated about introducing digital storytelling into their curriculums,” Madison said. “This is a learning model that can be replicated and applied in numerous ways.”

The project was funded by the Wayne Morse Center of Law and Politics and the School of Journalism and Communication.