Two More SITE Sessions: Digital Storytelling

A Digital Storytelling Implementation Experience with Early Childhood Students
Aslihan Kocaman-Karoglu, Middle East Technical University, Turkey

  • What is digital storytelling?
    • Story telling as an ancient tradition; digital storytelling integrates visual, interactive, and reiterative with constructive ideas
    • “combining the art of telling stories with some mixture of digital graphics, text, recorded audio narration, video…” B. Robin, 2006
  • Purpose of the Study
    • Outlines application of DS in pre-school and effects discovered on students’ learning (age 6)
    • Fall 2007, two pre-school classrooms with 28 students and 2 teachers total
  • Stories in pre-school
    • Great way of communication in classrooms
    • Teacher tells story, students “dial in” on the words
    • May use music and interaction
  • Story for this study
    • Story of the first president of the Turkish Republic
    • Used historical photo graphs, his recorded speech, songs he liked, etc.
  • Procedure
    • Pre-knowledge from students
    • Data gathered through classroom observation, teacher interviews, assessment of students’ drawings
    • Students drew a picture of the story and explained the drawings
  • Results
    • Students had a good understanding of the subject from the digital story
      • Although their drawings were simple, they were able to retell what they saw in the story
      • Only 3 of the 28 students couldn’t explain the main idea from the story
    • Teachers felt that the content was more understandable, were willing to create stories, agreed that it helped get across more content in a limited time, felt that they didn’t have time or technical knowledge

Implementation of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom by Teachers Trained in a Digital Storytelling Workshop
Bulent Dogan and Bernard Robin, University of Houston, USA

  • Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling Site
  • Used to teach content, empower students, teach writing, meet technology standards
  • Little structured research on digital storytelling
  • Purpose of study
    • To document teachers use of digital storytelling right after the workshop
    • If they used DS in the classroom, in what ways were they used? What purposes did teachers have?
    • If they were not used, why not?
  • Results
    • 78% were unaware of DS before the workshop
    • After the workshop, half did not use DS in their classrooms
      • Almost all the teachers said that they would want to use it,
        • For students
          • Video yearbook
          • History project
          • Description of field trips
          • Social and science investigation
        • For teachers
          • As alternative to power point
          • Used to present content
    • Impacts on students
      • Helped students understand presentation skills
      • Increase in motivation and 21st century skills
    • Impacts on teachers
      • Barriers: Time, access to hardware
      • Technical support was not as much a problem
    • Other results
      • Affected teaching style
      • Shared DS with other teachers and family members
      • Easy to use and make
      • “Director’s chair” effect
  • Resources