Digital texts and storytelling should be incorporated more broadly into our school program to enhance student engagement with reading and writing through these digital environments. Tackvic stated, quite poignantly, that digital tools can add a “positive dimension to traditional literacy” by helping users to become confident writers whilst using 21st century skills (2012). It seems that digital tools can help break down barriers to writing by spurring on creativity, providing stimulus and using skills relevant to contemporary learners. Sukovic also proposed that digital storytelling can engage learners and “tap into multiple intelligences and literacies”, which is very relevant in terms of good pedagogic practice and meeting the demands of the Australian Curriculum (2014). Additionally, digital learning environments provide spaces where students are exposed to a range of ideas and can work independently and collaboratively. These are all things we need to consider when addressing the diverse learning needs of our students.
After completing the last forum reflection, which addressed the use of social media, I have done some more thinking and researching on productive use of social media in the classroom. Fitzgerald spoke of the ability for social media to engage with and respond to the real world with real-time storytelling (2013). This was a pivotal statement for me. As someone who really engages with immersive journalism, I think this form of real-time storytelling could be a powerful tool in students sharing both non-fiction and fiction stories across a range of subject areas.
For example:
Non-fiction use:
- For English, students could write short story or recount in GIF form using an online generator
- For History, students could create a real-time class time line of a historical event (e.g. WWI or WWII), whereby each student would be assigned 1 day to record or add to the class Yammer. This would be in a similar vein as “WW2 Tweets from 1939“.
- For English, Year 9 students could take inspiration from the Humans of New York Facebook account and create a similar class project based on the biographies they are writing for their assessment task.
Fiction use:
- For English or Drama, students could collaboratively write a creative story, 1 line at a time on the class Yammar.
- For English or Art, students could create an Instagram narrative e.g. Ban.do‘s latest marketing campaign is based on a road trip narrative.
- For Drama, students could create a social media account for a fictional character. E.g. Darth Vader’s Twitter account.
Also, I’d really like to look more into the iTell project, as the report and results were very interesting and inspiring.
References:
Fitzgerald, A. (2013, July). Adventures in Twitter fiction [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_fitzgerald_adventures_in_twitter_fiction
Sukovic, S. (2014). iTell: Transliteracy and digital storytelling. Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 45(3), 205–229. http://doi.org/10.1080/00048623.2014.951114
Tackvic, C. (2012). Digital storytelling: Using technology to spark creativity. The Educational Forum, 76(4), 426. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1080/00131725.2012.707562
[Forum Reflection 4.2]