It is all about the story. If there is only one thing you walk away from this site with, that would be the one. Digital technology is great for enhancing and distributing the story but it can not replace a good story. Jason Ohler uses the analogy of a bad guitar player with an even larger amplifier and speakers. It is still bad, just louder. We see a lot of this with powerpoint presentations,the tool has actually made bad presentations worse. And made bad presentors out of a lot of people.
The good news for educators is that digital storytelling is really about good writing – which is easily defensible in this day and age of standards. The frosting on the cake is that being able to create and distribute movies is exciting to students. So if we are sneaky enough we can actually make writing engaging to many students who are adverse to academic work.