Digital Storytelling

Illustration By Frits

According to The Educational Use of Digital Storytelling, “digital story telling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories”. In today’s education, it can be used in a wide range of learning content with various ways of exploring stories.

For example, we can use images, video, movie, audio or narration as a means of telling a story on our computer. Utilizing digital stories is a very effective way of learning especially in today’s globalized society because people from any cultures can share their stories and participate to collaborative learning freely through the computer-based tools, without border barrier.

7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling  talks about the functions of  digital stories, which can be “instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective, and the resources available to incorporate into a digital story are virtually limitless, giving the storyteller enormous creative latitude”. Although educators can use it for any topics and contents with his/her own creation, it might be especially useful in a language classroom because such tools like audio, video, or images allow students to learn more about cultural aspects and different perspectives of people from other cultures as well as to improve their listening ability.

Thus, we could use digital storytelling as one of teaching methods for following purposes:

-Illustrating cultural background in a language classroom.

-Providing visual aids to help students better understanding of learning contents     

-Encouraging learners to be more motivated to their learning with authentic and interesting materials.

-Providing opportunities for sharing one’s thoughts and experiences on a specific topic.

-Creating a space for communication and independent learning  outside the classroom.