(Free No.6) An Exploration of Digital Storytelling

Some "Digital Stories" on Intercultural Communication

I think Digital Storytelling has a lot of potential for use in language learning, and actually for any kind of learning. It is a way to help learners connect the subject to their own lives and make it part of themselves.

One example is how students might make digital stories in a cross-cultural communication class like the following.





PowerPoint from the International Digital Storytelling Conference, which I'm hoping to attend next year possibly...

And shouldn't we be making interesting stories like this to summarize and highlight the research we do for essays in ARW or for research papers published in academic journals? Few people want to listen to "research" but everyone loves a "story".

While "research papers" might be efficient for communicating information to people who are interested in that topic already and want to read about it in detail, "digital stories" with high impact images, audio, video, and highlights of the importance or impact of that research can be effective for engaging the interest of people who do not know so much about that field of research and making them potentially interested in learning more about it in the future.

So...I would argue that our students should be trained to learn BOTH essay writing AND digital storytelling!

Digital Storytelling at University of Houston: Survey Results of Education Use, Social Studies Examples (Very powerful holocaust/Hiroshima images with music and data, no narration)

Digital Stories in e-Portfolios (link)