OAKLAND -- Van Boardman's favorite place in the world is his family's camp on Messalonskee Lake.

And as the Williams Elementary School fourth grader found out on Saturday, a picture with a thousand words goes a long way in helping others understand why.

"I was trying to tell about it and how it is fun and how it is my favorite place," Boardman said. "We go there every summer and I have a great time there."

Boardman was one of 17 fourth- through 12th-graders from across the state to take part in Saturday's Digital Storytelling Festival at Messalonskee High School's performing arts center. Organized by teachers in the Maine Writing Project, a University of Maine writing program for educators, the festival allowed students to use multimedia presentations to tell their own stories. Using computer programs that allowed the students to narrate their stories as pictures danced across the big screen and music blended with the imagery, the students were given the opportunity to use their creativity in ways they never had before.

The festival, the first of its kind held in Maine, is the outcropping of a two-year grant that allowed the Maine Writing Project to fund a team of educators to study story telling and how teachers can use digital tools to improve writing, said Debra Butterfield one of Gardiner Regional Middle School, one of the festival's sponsoring teachers.

"We've become a national model in looking at how teachers can improve writing instruction," said David Boardman, a sponsoring teacher and Messalonskee High School teacher. He also is Van Boardman's father.

The 17 presenters were selected from a field of 40 entries, but everyone who created a presentation benefited, Butterfield said.

"It's very motivational," she said. "It really helps them find their writing voice."

C.J. Cheevers, a freshman at Messalonskee High School, used the photos of Martha's Vineyard, which he and his family visit every summer, to hone the words he chose to describe his affection for the place.

"It gave me motivation," he said. "If I could write more stories like this I would write more projects."

Cheevers described the island in his narration and recounted some of the memories that make Martha's Vineyard so special to him.

"It was very fun," Cheevers said. "It was a good learning experience."

The presentations were intentionally selected for the wide range of topic.

"It ranged from the heartbreaking to the goofy," David Boardman said.

The students spent as much as 30 hours on the project. Matching the narrative with the photos, and then reading the narration flawlessly proved the biggest challenge for most of the students.

"The hardest thing about this was the recording," said Van Boardman. "I had to get it down right and I had to do it at the same time and not stop."

Matching the writing to visual helped refine the writing, said Seth Mitchell of Lisbon High School, one of the sponsoring teachers.

"It's important it starts with the writing," Mitchell said. "It's a multi-media project, but writing takes center stage."

The teachers already are planning another festival for next year and hope to show even more of the students' work. They will continue to have workshops to train other educators how the program works.

"It was actually a great number of submissions for the first year," David Boardman said.

Craig Crosby -- 861-9253

ccrosby@centralmaine.com