Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling

With the world constantly becoming more globalized, the integration of technology in the
classroom has become imperative. Current language learning students have access to more
technology and authentic materials than ever before. Teachers right now are looking for ways to
incorporate technology into their old activities in order to enhance the learning. With digital
storytelling, teachers can take a topic that will always have a place in the language classroom,
storytelling, and enhance it with technology. The advantages of digital story telling vs. traditional
storytelling techniques are numerous. Student motivation is higher when technology is involved.
Students can bring more of their own interests, express themselves at a higher level, learn a new
technological tool and give the learner more of a voice. There are so many options for digital
storytelling and language learners will have a great opportunity to use the language to its fullest
potential. With digital storytelling however, comes some tribulations for the learners. Within
groups, the load of the work might fall on certain students while others do not contribute as
much. This becomes an issue that the educator must work out ahead of time with strategic
planning.
Motivation, Creativity, Feedback and Engagement with Digital Storytelling
One reason Carmen Gregori-Signes argues for digital storytelling in the language classroom is
that it helps student motivation. For many students, digital storytelling is new. With more
technology access, students can create their very own digital stories. Tablets such as iPads,
Smartphones, and laptops all make this possible. Within each of these devices, more possibilities
await. Comic Maker, Keynote, Pages and Notability can assist with the story boarding and
brainstorming aspect. With the app Comic Maker, students can create a digital comic with
various characters, backgrounds and props. Keynote, Pages and Notability are different apps that
can be used to story board or create conversations. They can then be brought to life with iMovie
and Movie Maker. They can also edit the videos. They can then be uploaded to YouTube or
Vimeo and shared with more language classrooms across the world. This type of information is
appealing to the students . Before, storytelling consisted of writing a story or
maybe creating a comic strip with paper and a writing utensil. The student will have more
motivation to create a digital story because it is more attractive. It is also
more motivating to create because of how personalized it can be . One last reason
motivation plays a big part of digital storytelling is that it lowers the learner’s anxiety that they
might possess. This is also the learner’s affective filter. A student’s affective filter is how much
of the input is being learned by the student. This could be based on a number of factors, such as
motivation, attitude, anxiety, self-confidence and more . This is because the student
will potentially have the opportunity to practice the story telling numerous times, perfecting what
need be. This will help relax them and learning the language becomes less anxious and more
positive. There is time created by the teacher that is for editing and correcting. When video or
audio recording, the student can always edit or record something a second time. When the
student has the opportunity to repeat the vocabulary many times, the vocabulary is learned more
successfully.
creativity is another reason digital storytelling has a positive influence in the language classroom. This leads to different ways of learning and teaching the language . This is creativity by the teacher. The teacher has a multitude of ways to teach language through digital storytelling. The biggest advantage of this is that most of the tools are available to educators and are simple to learn to use. iMovie, for example, is one great tool to use digital storytelling with students. The teacher can create samples with iMovie and use them to teach concepts to the students.