Part II: Successful digital stories in language classroom

Digital storytelling can be used by language teachers at all levels in many ways, from introducing new vocabulary/phrase/grammar, structures to helping students enhance and synthesize language output, spoken and written. It also can help students organize thoughts/ideas as they learn to create stories for various audience and present their ideas and knowledge through target language in an individualized and meaningful way. Here are some successful stories to share with you.

Rance-Roney (2008) successfully took her students exploring English and their feelings toward US culture through “What Is an American?” digital story project. Learners’ first digital story production involved writing an “I AM” poem and producing that poem in a digital format. YuLing (Lucy) began her story by saying: “I am Lucy. Lovable. Kind. Open minded. I love nature. I hate complaining.” This project of restricted writing allowed learners to focus on learning how the technology works, mainly inserting digital images. Then, they moved from defining who they were to describing “Americans.” Sunwha, through search on Korean Google, found a website that contained sketched figures illustrating emotions, which fit perfectly with the message she was trying to portray. Her voice spoke:

“One tradition of the Korean culture is for people to take off shoes when they go into their houses. I moved to America. People do not take off shoes. One day, my landlady and her family came up to my room. They didn’t take off shoes. What a day! What a dirty shoes on my floor! I can’t imagine that there are dirty germs on my room….After they were gone, I cleaned up my floor, scrubbing, brushing. Finally, I’m down with my work and I enjoy it. Look at my shiny floor. Ooh-la-la.”

Rance-Roney (2008) stated that at completion of project, each student had captured a slice of life in the United States that was a keep-sake memory, but more than that, they had acquired and practiced a great deal of languages. Moreover, they become entranced by the power of their own voices and their own images.

Another effective example occurred in Even Start, a family literacy and parenting education program at Three Oaks Elementary School. Bamibi Fischer teaches immigrants to increase literacy using digital storytelling successfully. Fischer stated that she felt that digital storytelling was a unique and progressive way for the adults to learn. She said, “Because of the process of writing and speaking, it was a winner in promoting the acquisition of language skills.” (Feldman 2007)

The third successful story is in Anna Bowe’s French class at Lely High School in Naples. She stated that learners’ reaction went from tentative to very positive and they seemed proud of what they were able to pull together. Most importantly, the production process brought a diverse class together and she subsequently saw one of the more reserved learner started regularly offering to help other. She concluded that digital storytelling has revealed its potential in language classroom because it helps create a genuine community among learners where the language of the written word is embedded and enriched by visual image and aural elements, so catchy for today’s students. She said, “They never mumbled at the idea of editing and re-editing, because their product is real and they see the reason it should look good, sound good, and feel good.”

Hazel Geier, a retired Lee County teacher who has been chronicling use of digital storytelling technique in local high schools, took part in the National Writing Project at FGCU in 2004-06. She found that students in three different high schools all have embraced the new approach of writing, learning new technology skills, demonstrated creativity and critical thinking, and have developed social skills that involve supporting one another, listening and evaluating and appreciating one another’s efforts.”

Iannotti (2006) employed digital storytelling in her digital storytelling projects for ESL students. Through the process of creating the story, students were developing an understanding of story organization and transition. It is also brought to light the contrast between spoken and written English. Moreover, Iannotti used students’ digital stories for diagnosis on individual pronunciation problems which was included in the lesson plans targeting on discrete sounds that students have the most problems with. The scripts were used to explore sentence-level stress, encouraging students to consider what words and ideas should be emphasized, contrasting function and content word stress. She concluded that digital stories rule one: keep it simple. Iannotti stated that she has learned two very important lessons as an instructor: first, you need a manageable project with realistic goals to ensure success for the students; second, a young wife trying to make crab soup for her mother-in-law’s birthday makes for an amazing digital story.

The digital story made by Meg Garcia, a high school English and Art History teacher from southern California, is an outstanding example of authentic, object-based storytelling (Springer, Kajder, and Borst Brazas 2004). Meg's story revolved around the child she hopes one day to have - a daughter, to be named Matisse after the French early Twentieth Century artist. His colorful, decorative paper cutouts provided the visual foundation of the narrative. The story starts as follows:

Matisse Margaret Garcia will be the name of my daughter. I want my child to be unique and use her personal pair of scissors to craft the shape of her life. I want her imagination to be as vivid as gouache on paper . . . I want her to be named after Matisse, who, in the face of crippling arthritis could not keep the sea snail in the depths of the ocean . . .

Several factors make Meg's digital story successful. First, she chose a subject that she is comfortable enough in her knowledge, Matisse and his work to allow her personal reflections to remain center stage. Second, she strikes exactly the right emotional chord throughout. Her sensitivity to the artworks is keen and the associations gleaned from each personal and real. Third, words are chosen with a precision and economy that allow the individual images to carry the force of the story. Last but not least, what cannot be conveyed here, in writing, is the expressive power of her own voice, which, in fact, is the most powerful element of digital storytelling.

The same factors can be found in some of the digital stories that Dr. Schmidt showed us in class last week. Some of them are absolutely powerful, which is the kind of impact a traditional written story can never achieve. In fact, I have made one based on my first midwest adventure in summer 2008, which has been a fascinating experience for me. I know how much impact it will have on students through the production process because I have gone through it myself, which is one critical step for teachers to go through. I will continue exploring and I have to say that digital storytelling has definitely found its place in my classroom.