School Context and Subject Area

The institution for the digital storytelling project, Sticking Around, is a rural, K-12 state school located in New South Wales. Students at this school sit below the state average in Literacy and, upon observation, are not engaged in their learning. To improve student engagement and success, staff have suggested implementing rich, purposeful, and appropriate digital tools.  In concurrence, research has shown that the implementation of digital tools can positively affect student motivation, engagement, language skills, critical and creative thinking, and social (Yang & Wu, 2015, p. 340). As the digital landscape continues to change, so do the ways in which students learn. Therefore, as educators we must harness digital practices that are familiar and relevant to learners (Kovalik & Curwood, 2019, p. 185). At this school, students find their English lessons boring due to outdated materials or irrelevant delivery modes. One way to incite change is through the storytelling found within digital poetry, as learners can experience literature in more immersive, interactive, social, and collaborative ways (Gregory, 2013, p. 120-122).

Intended Audience

The intended audience is a year ten cohort of particularly reluctant learners. Despite the rural and isolated nature of the school, the secondary students have ample access to digital devices and are identified as techno-natives as they think, learn, and understand the world through modern technologies (Halton, 2021). However, these students struggle with traditional literacy practices. Therefore, a transitional pedagogy is needed to bridge digital and traditional literacies.

Intended purpose

The Australian Curriculum (n.d.) states that year ten students should interpret, evaluate, discuss, and create a wide range of literary texts involving abstract levels of higher order thinking and intertextual references. Sticking Around aims to engage learners in these skills as well as addressing curriculum learning elements, general capabilities, and cross-curriculum priorities. Poetry is just one aspect of the English Curriculum that has the potential to merge multimodal, digital, and print literacies within the classroom, as it is a highly versatile and creative way to teach language (Hirsch & Macleroy, 2020, p. 43). The digital storytelling found within Sticking Around utilises this merge and aims to increase student engagement through its digital, multimodal, and compositional affordances (Deoksoon & Li, 2021, p. 34). Additionally, Sticking Around aspires to foster identity development for students as they explore concepts of voice and perspective found within the poetry.

Digital affordances

It cannot be assumed that all digital texts are beneficial to students when used within a classroom environment, as distractions can sometimes outweigh the enhancements (Yokota & Teale, 2014, p. 581). Therefore, educators must be diligent when considering the appropriateness, authenticity, accessibility, and reliability of digital technologies and texts. Considering this, the tool used to create Sticking Around, Genial.ly, was chosen for its reliable navigation, user-friendly platform, and sharability. Through the digital affordances of Genial.ly, an interactive image was created, where layers of sound, music, movement, and text were then embedded to give an enhanced and transformative reading experience.

Value for program implementation

Sticking Around has been created to serve two primary purposes, 1) to communicate a message to its audience and 2) to serve as an example of digital storytelling (Malita & Martin, 2012, p. 3061). Through Sticking Around, students will discuss, compare, analyse, and evaluate the themes surrounding identity and belonging. This first phase enables students to link text-to-self, text-to-culture, and text-to-world (Mills & Levido, 2011, p. 81). Next, students investigate how the chosen medium, techniques, and imagery shape perspective and audience responses. This second phase challenges students, as it uncovers how texts and textual practices are ideological and social and how they inform perception and meaning. Sticking Around will be used as a work sample in the next phase, as students create a digital poem using Genial.ly or other appropriate applications. In the final phase, students will share their creations through a social platform with their peers and teacher, allowing for student proficiencies to be assessed (Mills & Levido, 2011, p. 81).

Value for diverse learning needs

Digital storytelling can be an effective instructional tool for students with diverse learning needs, especially for those who lag in literacy (Rhodes & Milby, 2007, p. 258; Korat & Falk, 2017, p. 209). It can help students retain information, comprehend complex materials, and engage with texts in assistive ways. Research has found that digital storytelling caters for diversity through personalised learning experiences, opportunities for skill development and confidence building, and the enhancement of social and emotional skills (Smeda et al., 2014, p. 15). Additionally, digital storytelling empowers students to think critically, creatively, and meaningfully across evolving digital technologies (Dockter et al., 2010, p. 420). Tomlinson (2000) states that diverse learning needs can be met through differentiating content, process, product and/or learning environment (p. 2). Through differentiating the content, Sticking Around’s interactive features and bite-sized poems engage reluctant and literacy-poor readers. Whilst the differentiated process creates a learning atmosphere that balances familiar and the new (Yamada-Rice, 2021, p. 64).

 

 

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Reference List

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. (n.d.). Australian Curriculum: Learning areas – English. https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/english/

Deoksoon, K., & Li, M. (2021). Digital storytelling: Facilitating learning and identity development. Journal of Computers in Education, 8, 33-61. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40692-020-00170-9

Dockter, J., Haug, D., & Lewis, C. (2010). Redefining rigor: Critical engagement, digital media, and the new English/Language Arts. Journal Of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(5), 418-420. http://doi.org/10.1598/JAAL.53.5.7

Genially (2021). Genial.ly application. https://genial.ly

Gregory, H. (2013). Youth take the lead: Digital poetry and the next generation. English in Education, 47(2), 118-133. https://doi.org/10.1111/eie.12011

Halton, C. (2021). Digital native, Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/digital-native.asp

Harris, M. (2021). Sticking Around. https://view.genial.ly/6139e18ccbef331033e58fef/interactive-image-sticking-around

Hirsch, S., & Macleroy, V. (2020). The art of belonging: exploring the effects on the English classroom when poetry meets multilingual digital storytelling. English in Education, 54(1), 41-57. https://doi.org/10.1080/04250494.2019.1690394

Kovalik, K., & Curwood, J. S. (2019). #poetryisnotdead: Understanding Instagram poetry within a transliteracies framework. Literacy, 53, 185 – 195.  https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12186

Malita, L., & Martin, C. (2010). Digital Storytelling as web passport to success in the 21st century. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2), 3060-3064. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.465

Mills, K. & Levido, A. (2011). iPed. Reading Teacher, 65(1), 80-91. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1598/RT.65.1.11

Rhodes, J.M., & Milby, M. (2007). Teacher-created electronic books: Integrating technology to support readers with disabilities. Reading Teacher, 61(3), 225-259. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1598/RT.61.3.6

Smeda, N., Dakich, E. & Sharda, N. The effectiveness of digital storytelling in the classrooms: a comprehensive study. Smart Learn. Environ. 1, 6 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-014-0006-3

Tomlinson, C. (2000). Differentiation of instruction in the elementary grades. ERIC Digest. ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education, August (2000). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED443572.pdf

Yamada-Rice, D. (2021). Children’s interactive storytelling in virtual reality. Multimodality & Society, 1(1), 48-67. https://doi.org/10.1177/2634979521992965

Yang, Y-T, C., & Wu, W. Digital Storytelling for Enhancing Student Academic Achievement, Critical Thinking, and Learning Motivation: A Year-Long Experimental Study. Computers and Education, vol. 59, no. 2, 2012, 339–352. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.12.012

Yokota, J. & Teale, W. H. (2014). Picture books and the digital world: educators making informed choices. The Reading Teacher, 34(6). https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1262