Tag Archives: INF533

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Context for digital story telling project

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Part A Context for digital story

Outline of the subject area

The digital story covers Hans Christian Andersen’s early life, the adversity he faced and his maturing into one of the most famous and prolific writers of children’s stories. It will briefly touch on how his stories have been adapted by many other writers over the years, have been adapted into feature films, and will briefly touch on the stories’ emotional range, from funny to sad and the morals and values presented in them.

A second part of the digital story will be more functional; it will show how to search the library catalogue, in this case, for works by, or about Hans Christian Andersen, or adaptations.
The final section of the story will show the affection and esteem with which H C Andersen is held, by showing images of statues erected to honour him around the world, and includes a link to an online jigsaw puzzle.

Intended purpose

It is hoped that by telling a moving story about Hans Christian Andersen’s impoverished and difficult childhood, and highlighting briefly some of his famous original stories (and the many adaptations by other writers), children will learn about a classic children’s writer and his stories. Those stories – many nearly two centuries old – are excellent for their emotional depth and range, for the morals and values they convey and for their evocative imagery, sympathetic characters and compelling and complex storylines.

In a public library context, the intended use of this digital story will be slightly different to how it might be used in an educational context. The digital story could be placed on the “e-resources for children” menu, on the public library’s OPAC (open public access catalogue), as an introduction to classic children’s writers and their works, and could be part of a series on classic children’s writers. The digital story also includes guidance on how to use the library’s catalogue to search for a writer’s works. This digital story could remain on the library’s OPAC indefinitely, since H C Andersen is now an historic figure, whose life story and body of work is complete.

Another purpose for the digital story could be extending a virtual storytime. Public libraries have, during the COVID-19 pandemic, been forced to cancel in-person public programs, and have turned to creating online, virtual storytimes, including for school-aged children, particularly during school holidays. There are many contemporary adaptations of any number of Andersen’s stories which would be suitable for reading in a virtual storytime; and the virtual storytime could be extended with a link to the digital story, for further engagement with the story of Hans Christian Andersen’s life, his fairytales, other adaptations and functional instruction in how to use the library’s catalogue and reservation service. A series of virtual storytimes could be created with a different Hans Christian Andersen story read each week, and with a link to the digital story included.

This digital story could also be used in the context of a school classroom or school library. It could be used in a unit on classic children’s literature, and after students have experienced the digital story, they could be set the task of creating their own story on a writer of their choosing. They would expand their knowledge of a favourite writer by having to research and create a narrative about that writer, and they will gain new digital skills in the use of a tool such as Sway, as well as being creatively engaged in making decisions about how to make their story engaging, with images, text, sound and hyperlinks.

Intended audience

The intended audience will be children in primary school, and potentially their parents or carers. It is most likely that the digital story will be accessed outside of school hours, when children are at home or visiting the local library after school. Local schools may want to use the digital story in a teaching unit, or as a way to encourage awareness of, and use of the local library outside of school hours. Children in this age group are “beginning to make cognitive connections between their concrete world and concepts” (Combs, 2016, para 8), and should be entering an age where they will begin to appreciate some of the more emotional and poignant aspects of the story of Andersen’s life, and may feel motivated to seek out his fairytales for their own reading. And by way of making a connection between what they are reading, doing and using at school, the local library can reinforce this and offer further instances of interaction with digital literature.

References
Coombs, B. (2016). Digital literacy: A new flavour of literacy or something different? Synergy, 14(1), https://search-informit-com-au.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/fullText;dn=216725;res=AEIPT

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By Judy Hannah : posted 26 July 2020

Assessment item 1 – Online blog task

I work in a public library delivering children’s services. During the shut-down of public libraries due to COVID-19, of course we had no-one coming into our libraries. We have now re-opened a few weeks ago, however none of the regular, in-person programs we were running before have started up again, since it would not yet be safe for public health to do so.

So in the absence of now not being able to deliver programs, we’ve had to find alternative ways and offerings to reach our audience.  And our audience is the family unit, not the child alone.  We are therefore really trying to engage with the whole family, and persuade “mums and dads”, and grandparents that reading, singing, talking to and even just playing with the very young is very important and beneficial for their development, including the development of pre-literacy skills.

So in the last few months I’ve become much better acquainted with pre-existing online story resources.  Story box library is a well-known Australian story-reading resource which public libraries can subscribe to and provide access to their library members.  At our library, we began producing a weekly e-newsletter during the shut-down, which we filled with content for our various demographics, from the very young through to seniors.  For preschoolers, we included links to read-aloud stories on Story box.  The picture books chosen on Story box are always Australian and published by  reputable local children’s publishers. The production values are high.  Actors, comedians and sometimes the writers themselves are the readers of the books, and up-close focus on the illustrations in the books is an important feature of the production; sound effects are also often included. Schools can also subscribe to Story box, I believe.

Story Box Library

Story box logo

However I wanted to find similar resources from further afield; and find them I did! The excellent Storyline Online, created and funded by the SAG-AFTRA Foundation in the USA, is similar to Storybox, in that well-known actors (and sometimes singers or politicians) read a picture book aloud which is recorded and available on the website.  There is also an app that you can download to your phone. It bills itself as “an award winning children’s literacy program.”  The production values on this one are next level!  While the foundation of every recording is an actual print picture book, they “enhance” the book by adding animation to the illustrations, sound effects and musical accompaniment. Some stories are signed using American sign language. The picture books chosen are very much predominantly American, although I did find an older (1984) Aussie classic picture book on there, Mem Fox’s “Wilfred, Gordon, McDonald Partridge”, so that was a surprise. And for all you teachers out there, many of the scores of recorded stories include teacher or activity guides, and suggested reading age level.  This is a very slick and professional resource, which does not require a login the way Story box does.

Storyline Online's home web page

Storyline Online’s home web page

Another digital picture book resource I found during this time was Tata’s Storytime from the UK. This is similar to the other two, in that, actors read a picture book aloud with is recorded and made available on the Tata’s Storytime YouTube channel, with focus on the illustrations and some sound effects added. The unique point of this resource is that all the readers (and the writers of the books) are people of colour, of African, Carribbean or African-Amercian heritage.

Logo_V2-01.png

Tata storytime logo

I can well imagine that these three resources all received a lot of attention around the world when public libraries went into shut-down and families could no longer borrow picture books for their children. I know that I made good use of all of them when looking for content to include in our library e-newsletters, emailed weekly to our library members.

In the public library where I work, we are now also beginning to produce our own recordings of storytimes which will be accessible via the library’s social media.

 

Story box library. (n.d.)  https://storyboxlibrary.com.au/

Storyline Online. (n.d.) https://www.storylineonline.net/

Tata storytime. (n.d.) https://www.tatastorytime.com/