Digital Storytelling

  Digital Storytelling

EDUC1049 – Blog Assignment

 

I was initially skeptical of digital storytelling as an educational tool, uninformed of the process and the effectiveness, particularly for secondary school students. After synthesizing the reading by Bernard R Robin I began to gain an understanding of what digital storytelling involves, and offers as a teaching device. Specifically, I found the paragraphs regarding “21^st Century Literacy” skills very informative, particularly when considered in context with Howell’s reasons for developing a digital pedagogy (Howell, 2012).

Digital literacy—the ability to communicate with an ever-expanding community to discuss issues, gather information, and seek help;

Global literacy—the capacity to read, interpret, respond, and contextualize messages from a global perspective

Technology literacy—the ability to use computers and other technology to improve learning, productivity, and performance;

Visual literacy—the ability to understand, produce, and communicate through visual images;

Information literacy—the ability to find, evaluate, and synthesize information

“integrating visual images with written text both enhances and accelerates student comprehension, and digital storytelling is an especially good technology tool for collecting, creating, analyzing, and combining visual images with written text.” (B. R. Robin, 2008) cited in (Burmark, 2004)

Figure 1: Cited from B. R. Robin, 2008

Again, emphasized multiple times throughout the Bernard’s text was the theme that, independently, technology is unable to improve educational value, however, when applied effectively in conjunction with congruent teaching, it can stimulate high quality, engaged learning from students. Teaching pedagogies have been adapted to optimize these opportunities and challenges, one such approach being TPCK or Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. As a result of reading the text, my perspective of digital storytelling has shifted, I believe it is an extremely useful activity for engendering digital, and conventional literacy skills, whilst also being an immensely engaging activity for students.

“The reality is that advocates of instructional technologies in schools have, for many years, been urging educational administrators and policymakers to change the focus from the technology itself to ways that technology can be used to bring out the very best in how teachers teach and how students learn.” (B. R. Robin, 2008)

Here are the skills supported by digital storytelling according to Bernard in an earlier text: (B. Robin, 2006)

• Research Skills:

Documenting the story, finding and analyzing pertinent information;

• Writing Skills:

Formulating a point of view and developing a script;

• Organization Skills:

Managing the scope of the project, the materials used and the time it takes to complete the task;

• Technology Skills:

learning to use a variety of tools, such as digital cameras, scanners, microphones and multimedia authoring software;

• Presentation Skills:

Deciding how to best present the story to an audience;

• Interview Skills:

Finding sources to interview and determining questions to ask;

• Interpersonal Skills:

Working within a group and determining individual roles  for group members;

• Problem-Solving Skills:

Learning to make decisions and overcome obstacles at all stages of the project, from inception to completion; and

•Assessment Skills:

Gaining expertise critiquing  their own and others’ work.

References:

 

Burmark, L. (2004). Visual Presentations That Prompt, Flash & Transform Here are some great ways to have more visually interesting class sessions. Media and methods, 40, 4-5. 

Howell, J. (2012). Teaching with ICT: Digital Pedagogies for Collaboration and Creativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Robin, B. (2006). The educational uses of digital storytelling. Paper presented at the Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference.

Robin, B. R. (2008). Digital storytelling: A powerful technology tool for the 21st century classroom. Theory into Practice, 47(3), 220-228.