Abstract: We considered digital storytelling (Ohler, 2006) as an umbrella term, which included digital video, slideshows, and any other applications that students can use to tell stories (narrative, informational, or argumentative) with multimedia These technologies include movie-making software (iMovie, MovieMaker), slideshow applications (PowerPoint, Keynote), and interactive whiteboard apps (ShowMe, Educreations) In this presentation, we report on the particular affordances we discovered with the interactive whiteboard apps Interactive Whiteboard Apps are generally used in many online tutorial websites, like Khan Academy, as teaching tools These interactive whiteboard apps allow individuals to create presentations using images, text, drawings, and audio voice-overs We used these interactive whiteboard apps, like Show Me and Educreations as a digital journaling activity where students could use language and literacy to illustrate their understanding During the presentation, we will illustrate how the multimodal affordances of digital storytelling helped the students integrate language, images, and writing into their explanations; the students were empowered and their explanations were more detailed Furthermore, we will show how the use of technology to capture student thinking through writing and speaking provided an additional benefit of formative assessment used for planning more purposeful tasks aligned to student needs