Notes from “Digital Storytelling: Enhancing Language, Visual, and Media Literacies”

Digital Storytelling: Enhancing Language, Visual, and Media Literacies

MRA 2009 Presentation

Ledong Li, Tingfeng Luo, Wen Wu, Fan Zhang, Oakland University

• What’s Your Story?
• Stories Surround Us
• What is digital storytelling?

• Daniel Meadows: “short personal multimedia tales told
  from the heart”

• Educational Use of Digital Storytelling

• Focus on specific topic and contain a particular point of
  view
• Topics range from personal tales recounting historical
  events, exploring life in one’s own community, to the search for life
  in other corners of the universe
• They can vary in length, but in education they typically
  last between 2-10 minutes

• Procedure

• Write script
• Collect assets
• Create storyboard
• Draft, edit, and finalize
• Publish it as a movie file

• Hardware

• Computer
• External hard drive/flash drive
• Headset with microphone
• Scanner
• Digital Camera/Digital Video Camera
• Facilities with access to internet

• Software

• Movie Tools: Flash, Premiere, Photostory, Movie Maker,
  iMovie
• Imaging Tools: Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, iPhoto
• Audio: Audition, iTunes, Garageband, Audacity
• Players: Windows Media Player, iTunes, VLC, Flash

• Why digital storytelling?

• Storytelling has been important to individuals since the
  early days of civilization
• In education, storytelling remains a way to teach subtle
  points and make elusive abstractions concrete
• With the latest development of computers, multimedia
  systems, and the Internet, “images, sounds, animations, and video
  clips” can be brought together with “texts,” providing a wide range of
  story formats

• The Changing World

• Friedman, “The World is Flat”

• Globalization 1.0 (1492 – 1800) Countries/trade
• Globalization 2.0 (1800 – 2000) Companies/labor
• Globalization 3.0 (2000 – Present) Individuals/internet

• Moving from web 1.0 to web 2.0

• Mode: Reading to writing
• Primary Unit of Content: Page to post
• State: Static to dynamic
• Viewed through: Web browser to Browsers, RSS Readers,
  phones
• Architecture: Client server to web services
• Content created by: Web coders to everyone
• Domain of: Geeks to “mass amateurization”

• What does this mean for learning?

• Obvious answers

• New technologies and tools
• Different workflow processes
• Competition and expectations of end users

• Less obvious answers

• New expectations for the relationship between learners
  and instructors
• New modes of writing and communication
• New literacies

• Web 2.0 to Literacy 2.0

• Web 2.0 – business model focused on a service rather than
  product that values participation, collaboration, and distribution
• Literacy 2.0 – students are appropriating digital
  applications, networks, and services; they are developing new ways of
  reading, writing, viewing, listening, and recording — new ways that
  embody this 2.0 environment
• Literacy 2.0 necessarily involves extensive
  participation, collaboration, and distribution of expertise and
  intelligence

• Purpose of our Study

• Engaging graduate students (in-service teachers) and
  undergraduates (pre-service teachers) in how to make digital stories
• Examine the potential of digital storytelling used to
  enhance traditional and new literacies
• Bridging literacy methods, changing perspectives, how to
  inform instruction

• Roles that participants played

• Writers
• Text editors
• Visual designers
• Image editors
• Voice recording specialists
• Audio editing
• Movie producers

• Impacts on education

• Practical and learner-centered
• Meets ed tech standards
• Enhances literacies: language, visual, media
• Helps build useful skills in web 2.0/literacy 2.0:
  participation, collaboration, distribution