Digital Storytelling

Photo by Palos Verdes Library District


As an ESL teacher to be, I am glad to have discovered digital storytelling. I think it is a fun and creative way to be able to implement reading, writing, listening and even speaking skills in not only one place but simultaneously as well. In a nutshell, "Digital storytelling is the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component"(7 things you should know about digital storytelling). It is being used around the world, for many different purposes. In the UK, BBC uses digital storytelling to capture and share stories from around the country that reflect different local histories and cultures. In California, a local radio station in San Francisco collects stories from High School students about how they came to live there.In the college of Education at the University of Houston, faculty is coming together to educate students and instructors on how digital storytelling provides endless amounts of educational opportunities.In Buffalo, New York(or wherever else I end up teaching), I hope to use digital storytelling in my ESL classroom for many different purposes. Firstly, it can be used for collaboration purposes as well as individual purposes. Since it first begins with a script, I would ask my students to begin writing a story on how they arrived to my classroom from wherever they came from. Then, I would have them add audio effects(like music), animations, video effects, images and whatever else they wish to include. This would be a great idea for an icebreaker in the beginning of the school year. Also, since images and sound can be included, this assignment would work for beginners as well as advanced students. It would be the perfect way to be able to incorporate all different levels of ELL's in the same assignment(and in one place) because with digital storytelling, you can really alter the content to fit any level and situation. Educational resources like digital storytelling really excite me to become an ESL teacher and to start using these kinds of tools where I know students will be much more engaged in their learning process.

Digital Learners

A Vision of K-12 Students Today was created to inspire teachers to use technology in their classrooms.  This video shows us that our students are unengaged in their schools and are clearly unhappy about it.  The answer is simple yet we are still not acting upon it.  Our students want and need one thing: A digital classroom.  They want to use wikis, blogging, digital books and other digital technology as opposed to sitting in the classroom and listening to the teachers lecture.  A fact that stuck out to me in the video is that in China, there are more honor students than there actually are people living in North America.  Also, they mention that only half of the people in North America will graduate from high school.  How can we see increasing graduation rates if our students are unengaged in the classroom?  We need to ensure that our students are learning and growing mentally.  In order to do so, they need to develop higher level thinking skills.  They need to learn how to critically think and more importantly, they WANT to learn how to! We can help them develop and grow if we actively engage them and give them the opportunities to develop these skills.  This can be reached through blogging, wikis, digital books and hundreds of other technological tools that can be integrated in our lesson planning. I think the answer is simple.  TO ENGAGE OUR STUDENTS OF AMERICA, WE NEED TO INTEGRATE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IN OUR CLASSROOMS!