Educators should understand how and why to incorporate digital storytelling into a curriculum. My previous posts have addressed how to incorporate digital stories. This post addresses why educators should incorporate this teaching concept into their curriculum. The definition of digital storytelling combines two essential elements that are related to modern learning. Since the development of the earliest teaching practices, educators have used narratives to reinforce learning. These narratives allow students to attach additional meaning to topics which reinforces the understanding and retention of information. Digital storytelling combines the use of narratives with modern technology to formulate a new teaching concept. Computers provide modern learners with limitless amounts of information and easily-accessible software applications. According to researchers, digital storytelling is effective because it requires students to develop and use critical thinking skills. This process also allows learners to employ creativity and visual stimuli into the final product.
The use of digital storytelling continues to spread to all academic levels and subject matter. This instructional technique will continue to migrate as new applications are developed. A major concern for educators is that the digital storytelling process should not evolve into a practice that focuses solely on the use of multimedia applications and the narratives are overlooked. Educators must ensure that they specify an appropriate balance between technology and the discovery of new information when planning to use digital storytelling in their curriculum.
Hi Fred, Thanks for posting and brining the components of this semester to a close. I believe knowing how to incorporate this digital storytelling piece in an actual curriculum is very important. I did have a question though: When you said "According to researchers, digital storytelling is effective because it requires students to develop and use critical thinking skills." which researchers were you referencing? I would have loved to have followed a link or saw the reference at the end of the blog. Thanks for sharing! - Colleen
ReplyDeleteHi Colleen. Thanks for your comments. There are numerous research articles that support the benefits of digital storytelling. I’ve been working on a certification course for paramedics so I researched the curriculums for nursing students and I found out that their educational programs use digital storytelling projects as a means of developing critical thinking skills. I apologize for not including a link to the article that I mentioned in my post. The article is titled “Storytelling and professional learning: A phenomenographic study of students’ experience of patient digital stories in nurse education” and it was published in the Nurse Education Today journal. Best regards- Fred
DeleteHi Fred, I enjoyed reading your post about the reasons why digital story telling is beneficial. I was glad to read the part where you affirmed digital storytelling had been found to cause learners to apply critical thinking skills. My student really took to the project and the program used brought about that opportunity for creativity and as you said, visual stimuli. Yes, the narrative format does have quite an impact when communicating lessons. I read an article for another class that promoted teaching science concepts through the use of narrative texts. I thought you gave solid suggestions for why to incorporate digital storytelling, and tips for how to manage the activity for students. Thanks for writing! –Carol
ReplyDeleteCarol, thanks for your comments. The digital storytelling concept is new to me. I develop online training courses so I don’t get to incorporate group activities. I would be interested in reading the article that you referred to in your comments. I think that digital storytelling projects can be incorporated into almost any subject. I enjoyed the digital storytelling project that we created for this course and how it was structured. Each week, we learned to complete tasks that ultimately contributed to the final project. Best regards in your teaching endeavors!- Fred