Monday, August 17, 2009

Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling is certainly going to be a fun task for students to undertake. Not only is it an extremely engaging tasks, but it also helps to refine the following skills:-
  1. Writing Skills.
  2. Speaking and Visual Skills.
  3. Technical Skills.
  4. Personal Development Skills. ( Dyck, 2005)
These are all skills that are imperative to our students throughout their educational journeys.

Completing this type of task is a great example of Kearsley and Shneiderman's Engagement Theory. "The fundamental idea underlying engagement theory is that students must be meaningfully engaged in learning activities through interaction with others in worthwhile tasks" (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999) Students can complete this task collaboratively by working together or by reviewing each others work. Digital Storytelling is a form of technology that "provides an electronic learning mileux that fosters the kind of creativity and communication needed to nourish engagement" ( Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999)
From what I could see on the Digital Storytelling Site, there are a variety of free software downloads that students can access, so all of our students should be able to create these 'stories'. There should be no disadvantages relating to software. These stories are encouraged to be 2 -5 minutes long, so they are short and concise. This helps keeps the audience ( in this case, their peers) interested.

In my classroom, I would ask students to re-create an Aboriginal dream time story using Digital Storytelling. This is a way that students can appreciate how one of the oldest form of learning can be linked to their digital world.

Digital Storytelling is certainly a task which allows students to be as creative as they like. In his article, Engage Me or Enrage Me, Prensky ( 2005) states, "All the students we teach have something in their lives that's really engaging...something that has an engaging, creative component to it". I believe that by making this 'something' a task within the classroom, you would be very successful at engaging your students, and your class would most likely be one they look forward to coming to. More than likely, teachers would find that they had less disruption in their classroom, as their students would be immersed on the task presented to them. In my experience as a Mother, kids are always looking for ways to express themselves and their personalities. The traditional methods of teaching do not seem to cater for this. It is not surprising that our students are not listening. "the T-shirt i recently saw a kid wearing in New York City: "It's not ADD - I'm just not listening!"" (Presnky, 2005)
And why should that student be listening to us if we refuse to listen to him/her? We expect our students to listen to stale and sometimes out of date information. How frustrating it must be for our students to sit in a classroom and listen to information that they may have recently discovered on the Internet is out of date? And how embarrassing for our teachers!


References

Digital Storytelling. Retrieved August 17, 2009, from http://www.lubbockisd.org/sfirenza/storytelling/#top

Dyck, Brenda. "Digital Storytelling: Igniting New Life into Writing."Classroom Connect Newsletter (2005): 16-17. Retrieved August 17, 2009, from http://www.lubbockisd.org/sfirenza/storytelling/#7%20elements

Kearsley, G. & Shneiderman, B. (1999) Engagement Theory: A framework for technology based teaching and learning. Retrieved July 4, 2009, from http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm

Prensky, M. (2005) Engage Me or Enrage Me - What today's learners demand. Retrieved July 3, 2009, from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0553.pdf

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