Digital Storytelling
Never had I heard about digital storytelling until the textbook Leading 21st Century Schools briefly mentioned it. This teaching tool sparked my interest, but I needed more details, success stories, and practical ideas to venture to employ it in my ESOL classroom. That is why it did not take me too long to decide what topic to focus on for the first literature/webinar review. Luckily, tesol.org contains various resources for ESOL teachers on Computer-Assisted Language Learning and among them the multimedia resource Unleash Your Students’ Creativity With Microsoft Photo Story by Michal Eskayo (2011). Unfortunately, my browser did not allow to retrieve the resource directly from http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/trc/trc_submission_detail_new.asp?id=1106, but I was able to find it at http://sites.google.com/site/tesolphotostory/home. It consists of a PowerPoint presentation that shows how Microsoft Photo Story 3, a free easily downloadable resource, can be used to create digital stories , resumes, movie trailers, and essays (see the video below), numerous handouts for beginning through advanced students, illustrating the tasks with step-by-step instructions, and several samples of the digital stories themselves. This multimedia resource quite justifiably claims that Photo Story 3 is easier than PowerPoint, allows to create movies from photos, add text, music, record voice and practice an array of skills: speaking, listening, pronunciation, reading, writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation, computer skills, etc. It demonstrates how students can introduce themselves and their cultures, present their job experience, qualifications, and skills, tell a story about the ordeal they went through before coming to the US, and create a movie trailer on the topic of their choice. All these tasks seem extremely relevant, meaningful, and engaging to the students, tap into higher-order thinking skills, and promote language and computer skills development. The handouts provide clear guidelines, offer linguistic forms and sentence starters, and prepare for real-life challenges.
Digital Essay
Though Unleash Your Students’ Creativity With Microsoft Photo Story clarified some principles of utilizing digital storytelling in the classroom, there was still some fuzziness left. That is what led me to the discovery of Digital Storytelling Guide for Educators by Midge Frazel available as a Kindle version on Amazon besides a physical one (http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Storytelling-Guide-Educators-ebook/dp/B004BLK9R8/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1334526151&sr=8-3). The book describes several types of digital stories (digital stories, photo essays, presentations, scrapblogs, ePortfolios and some others) and presents the description of each process and its steps. There is an abundance of websites and articles suggesting practical ideas and providing examples of using storytelling in the classroom. The author also illustrates how this educational tool satisfies such educational benchmarks as communication and collaboration, critical thinking and problems solving, research, digital citizenship, etc. (102) Digital Storytelling Guide for Educators supplies numerous topics to explore including but not limited to family history, identifying points of intersection in students' lives, connecting students' immigration history to the history of Ellis Island in New York, stories of the students' relocation, having students imagine how different their lives would be had they been born and raised in another country and/or century, etc. Some of the topics were accompanied by higher-order questions designed to guide them through their research. All things considered, Digital Storytelling Guide for Educators by Midge Frazel is a very valuable resource for educators, parents, and advanced students who wish to learn practical skills on using digital storytelling in the classroom or outside of the classroom. Hands-on suggestions, ideas, websites and thoughtful recommendations abound in the book, while still keeping it very user-friendly and comprehensible.
My reflection on this activity will be presented with the focus on ESOL students though I am certain that this incredible tool can be very successful in mainstream classes with native speakers as well. Digital storytelling permits creating meaningful and authentic assignments while working on multiple language, computer, and content skills. It is very engaging and enhances students’ motivation. It is effective for visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners and taps into various multiple intelligences. Digital storytelling allows us to honor and promote our students' native cultures, which is vital for many of them who are steadily losing their roots after arriving in the US and having to assimilate into this new for them society. What makes it so drastically different from PowerPoint presentations is the audience: in digital storytelling students can present a story in front of the class, have their classmates and friends watch it outside of the class, allow the whole school or the local community watch it, and even spread it more globally by posting it on social networks, wikis, YouTube etc.
Traditionally, every semester my ESOL College Bridge students learn how to create PowerPoint presentations, and as a final project ,they create PowerPoint presentations about their home countries, traditions, cuisine, etc. Such programs as Photo Story 3 will allow me to go further and have the students create digital essays on more specific topics (they career paths, what helps them to adjust to the new society, the stories of their relocation, etc.). Moreover, this semester my students are writing stories using the TOEFL vocabulary previously studied and presenting them in the class via a whiteboard projector. Next week I am planning to reserve a computer lab to teach how to use Photo Story 3 and transform their new stories into digital stories. I am sure it will be so much fun and not that time consuming as it might seem. As usual, before having them present their stories, their papers will be corrected by me and edited and revised by the students. When I start teaching regular ESOL classes (not college transition ones), I will also have my students create the stimulations of job interviews and digital resumes, reenact historic events, provide their analysis, and present them in the digital format. My students could also ask their parents and grandparents about some stories passed along from a generation to a generation in their countries. In this way, they will enhance the knowledge of their historic background and traditions, retell them using digital storytelling, and present them on a school, community, and a more global level. After all, our students regularly post photos, comments, and videos from their lives on Facebook. Hence, using digital storytelling in the classroom is likely to become second nature to them. They will have fun while learning English, computer skills and other subjects, improving their critical thinking skills and preparing to be effective and efficient citizens and employees of the 21st century. What else to wish for?!
That is a brief summary and reflection of my acquaintance with the digital storytelling. I'm sure it is just in the onset and our "collaboration" will be successful and productive. However, my humble knowledge and experience with this education tool allows me to say that this multimedia resource and book fulfill the following course objectives:
1. Demonstrate the understanding of how technologies can effectively promote student learning.
The resources cited above showed to me how traditional tasks like having students introduce themselves and write an essay can be transformed into extremely engaging, cognitively challenging, and technologically advanced, though not complicated, activities. Having our students shift the focus from writing to and for the teacher to expressing their thoughts, ideas, and beliefs to a group of peers or even a local community drastically changes the classroom environment and produces independent learners and critical thinkers.
2. Evaluate and use a variety of current technologies to enhance content instruction and to advance students' technological literacy.
The multimedia resource and the book describe only one tool, digital storytelling, but in depth and quite comprehensively, providing real-life examples, numerous additional resources, and innovative ideas. They also illustrate how content instruction can be enriched and improve students’ technological skills and literacy.
5. Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of safe, ethical, legal, and moral practices related to digital information and technology.
Digital Storytelling Guide for Educators by Midge Frazel explains in detail the concept of digital citizenship and gives practical advice on how teachers can educate their students in this respect. And though I did not mention this aspect in the reflection, I will definitely use the resources and recommendations of the book in my teaching practice.
7. Demonstrate an understanding of the use of adaptive technologies and other digital resources to personalize and differentiate learning activities for every student.
Both resources clearly illustrate how instruction can be differentiated and personalized based on students’ skills, interests, and backgrounds. Thus, for example, stronger students may create short digital stories, while stronger ones – longer digital essays. They will always convey their personal experiences, ideas, and beliefs in the projects, making them very meaningful and relevant.
8. Evaluate, adapt, and reflect upon emerging tools and trends by participating in local and global learning communities and by reviewing current research and professional literature.
Studying Unleash Your Students’ Creativity With Microsoft Photo Story and Digital Storytelling Guide for Educators allowed me to reflect on the described tool, samples, and ideas, evaluate and adapt them to my ESOL College Bridge classroom and regular ESOL adult classes, where I am planning to teach in the future.
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