What is the purpose of the digital story telling – usually it is an educational aim, which is more often than not engaged with during the process of construct and not necessarily the finished product.

There is no doubt that students’ and teachers’ journeys can resonate with school leaders and board members. But are they resonating to promote change or simple reassuring them that their schools are wonderful places?

Without drawing the dots for them – it is just another failed advertising campaigns – digital story telling runs the risk of just providing warm fuzzy feelings that will actually reinforce the status que, not challenge it.

The saturation of You Tube Videos has already numbed school leaders – There’s the tertiary ones with lots of statistic and reflective piano arpeggios or the secondary one with lots of ‘student voice’ vox pops or even the primary ones with Barneyesque ethnic tokenism and lots of cutesy voiced children talking about when they ‘are big the jobs they’ll do don’t exist now’.

Sorry says the cynic in the back row – not working. Ironically educators are ticking the boxes with these efforts with the agendas of ‘student voice’ and technology, while the actually ‘trail blazing’ teachers and students still struggle under impoverished levels of technology and inappropriate curriculum.

Advertising works – it persuades and can modify behaviour. Advertising works because it has a clear purpose and is perfectly tailor in its form and content so as to engage its target audience.

Stop the digital story telling and start the digital advertising. Know whom your talking to, know how you want their behaviours to change and design the text appropriately. Don’t stop using digital story telling to educate, but realise at best it might resonate, but it was never design to change administrator and school leaders attitudes or behaviours.

The irony is with the zero cost of publishing and reaching an audience, that we have perhaps become too careless in considering who our audience is and what we are hoping to achieve.

There is a places for all forms of publishing, sharing and collaborating in education, but do not confuse those forms with advertising (or propaganda depending on your perspective).