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

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

  1. Good capture of the presentation I guess, gives us the idea on the focus. Especially interesting to see Web2.0 to Literacy2.0, will it be possible to share more details on this particular topic? I have been using an interesting tool
    FunnelBrain which I think suits this section!

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