PART A: Context for Digital Story Telling Project 

This digital story telling (DST) project is for Stage 3 students studying about the life of refugees. The inspiration for this digital story came after co-teaching the unit on refugees to Year 5 students.  The literature unit text was Mahtab’s Story by Libby Gleeson- the real-life story of Mahtab, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan. The focus of the digital story is to compliment the text. Students will be engaged deeply in this digital narrative which will enhance students’ understanding about the journey of refugees. Students will gain an enriching experience and will be able to understand this complex issue through this powerful medium.

This digital story project on the life of refugees. Zara’s Story is a historical fiction that tells about the harrowing journey of refugees and unimaginable dangers in their life. Digital story telling (DST) is an excellent way to generate interest, attention and motivation for the students in the classroom. 80% of the students come from a non-English speaking background. Students will get a virtual experience and learn about the life of a refugee. This digital story will include a range of literary materials including images and poster.

This video is created to build students’ skills in response to literature and recent events surrounding asylum seekers and refugees in Australia and around the world. Students will explore Australian identity in the context of change and continuity and will get insight into the life of individuals and group as refugees. This digital story will enhance current lessons within a larger unit, as a way to facilitate discussion about the topics presented a story and as a way of making abstract or conceptual content more understandable. This experience will allow students to make deep connections to the content.

It will be incorporated into English curriculum and will also integrate information and communication technology (ICT); requirement of NSW National Education Standards Authority (NESA) Syllabus. The outcomes that will be covered ACELA1525, ACELA1518, ACELA1520, ACELT1613, ACELT1615, ACELT1617, ACELT1618, ACELT1800 and English Syllabus outcomes EN3-1A, EN3-3A, EN3-5B, EN3-7C, EN3-8D, EN3-9E.

Digital storytelling allows opportunities not just for reading, but for creating as well. For any curriculum area that entails writing, digital storytelling could transform students’ perceptions of and their actual abilities to express themselves through the written word (Tackvic, 2012).   It will assist students who struggle with writing.

Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (2014) General Capabilities state that by the end of Year 6 students use ICT effectively and independently or collaboratively create and modify digital solutions, creative outputs or data representation/ transformation for particular audiences and purposes. Digital story telling can fulfill these criteria. When these kinds of topics and issues are taught in school, it develops empathy and tolerance in students.

Teachers and students will benefit from this resource as it will inspire to dig deep and learn more about the topic. The digital story is told by using the digital tools such as Adobe Spark and Canvas. These digital tools add a positive dimension to traditional literacy (Tackvic, 2012). Adobe spark is easy to use, and it allow students to co-edit their projects and share via twitter, Facebook, email, Instagram and more. Adobe Spark is free to use and supports all the web browsers as well as chrome books. It allows to tell story into a captivating animated narrated video form and also makes it possible to import only creative commons licensed images. All the images used in the video are from Adobe Spark.

One of the main objectives of this DST is to provide the diverse learners in the classroom with multiple opportunities to familiarise with the topic and gain better understanding. DST can be beneficial to diverse learners as instructional multimedia create opportunities for all learners to become active and empowered learners by facilitating problem solving and creativity and enhancing student learning. Also, students with disabilities often feel confident with the use of technology to support learning (Rhodes, 2007).

This Adobe spark video will be used as an experiential learning resource for students to support the understanding about seeking refuge and migration. Students can also create and share their digital project with sister schools as they are learning the same topic. Overall, it will demonstrate the richness of learning that will occur as students engaged in reading and writing through a great deal of talking, listening, observing and viewing with concrete materials, print and digital texts (Walsh, 2010).

At the end of the video, teachers can ask students to make posters to create awareness regarding the aid we can provide to refugees using tools such as canva.

Part B: URL

PART C: Critical Reflection

As I had mentioned in my blog 1, that I had experience with only the traditional literature presented in digital form. This subject has given me the exposure to different ways in which literature can be used in the digital world to provide engaging experience to students. Lamb and Walsh’s articles gave me an insight in to evaluating a digital literature.

I strongly agree that digital literacy has the ability to make meaningful connections between disparate ideas and to apply existing knowledge in new ways are key aspects of creativity (Sukovic, 2014). Digital storytelling provides a wealth of opportunities to engage students in content learning; no matter what content they explore, the process of research, writing, creating, and editing a digital story builds essential 21st century literacy skills.

Digital story is more than just technology. It gives students rich experiences and enhances their perceptions as it is a medium of expression, communication, integration, and imagination (Malita & Martin, 2010). Books with multimedia elements deepen the reader’s understanding and appreciation of the story. When students collaboratively create a digital story, they develop communication skills, learn to ask questions, express opinions, construct narratives and write for an audience, improving also their language and computer skills by using software that combines a variety of multimedia: text, images, audio, video and web publishing(Malita & Martin, 2010).  Also, when digital stories are created, students not only become more technologically literate, but they also become designers, listeners, interpreters, readers, writers, communicators, artists, and thinkers (Kajder, 2004). It combines hands on creativity and technology making literacy a fun learning activity.

It is challenging for educators to continue to maintain students’ motivation to read books and to engage in sustained reading.  However, the interweaving of digital technology motivates students and allows for a holistic learning experience with talking, listening, reading and writing being interdependent (Walsh, 2010). We need to incorporate basic aspects of digital communication technologies in relation to syllabus outcomes. I found Kinglesy (2007) article on 20 ways to empower diverse learners with educational and digital media very interesting. It provides practical ways to utilise digital tools to support classroom teaching and learning.

Today anyone can publish their digital book relatively easily and put it in the digital world and therefore it is very necessary to evaluate the quality of digital texts. Through this subject, some of the ways that I learnt to evaluate the digital text are as follows

• To check the content of the text
• To read the book and seek out the recommendations of others before suggesting it to children.
• To consider the ease of use, the promotion of understanding, and the literary worthiness of the text.

In today’s digital world, students come to school with a wealth of experience in the use of digital technologies for personal entertainment, learning and social interaction, schools need to provide an environment that exploits this digital familiarity (O’Connell, 2015). According to Dobler (2013), as educators we should teach children how to make wise decisions about book selections of all types, and also make these selections for children when necessary.

Teachers need to be aware of the copyright issue and fair use of digital learning materials.  Module 6 provided insight into creative commons licensing and alternatives to source free digital literature. Through this subject, I became aware of the free digital resources. I emailed staff at our school and also included in the school’s newsletter regarding project Guttenberg, International Children’s Digital library, Aust Lit children’s Digital Resource and iBook store free iBooks or eBook Apps. As mentioned in my blog 1, the school has no eBooks subscription, so these free digital resources were highly beneficial and appreciated by the school community. During pandemic, these resources provided equitable and fair use to all our students.

To address this national expectation of the Australian Curriculum: English which aims to ensure that students ‘listen to, read, view, speak, write, create and reflect on increasingly complex and sophisticated spoken, written and multimodal texts across a growing range of contexts with accuracy, fluency and purpose’ (Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority, 2014), the learning of this subject of incorporating eBooks, interactive text and digital story telling will be very useful to me in future. I have thoroughly enjoyed making digital story telling video using Adobe Spark. I will continue to learn, explore and use digital storytelling further in my professional life.

References

Adobe Spark. (2020). Designing like a Pro. Retrieved from https://spark.adobe.com/sp/

Brahmbhatt, P. (2020, September 4). Critical Reflection of Experiencing Digital Literature Experiences. Retrieved from https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/priti/category/inf-533/

Canva. (2020). Canva- Collaborate & Create amazing graphic design for free. Retrieved from https://www.canva.com/

Dobler, E. (2013). Looking beyond the screen: Evaluating the quality of digital books. Reading Today, 30(5), 20-21.

Kajder, S. (2004). Enter here: Personal narrative and digital storytelling. The English Journal, 93, 64-68

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. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042810005057

O’Connell, J., Bales, J., & Mitchell, P. (2015). [R]Evolution in reading cultures: 2020
vision for school libraries. The Australian Library Journal, 64(3),194-208. 10.1080/00049670.2015.1048043.

Rhodes, J. M. (2007). Teacher-created electronic books: Integrating technology to support readers with disabilities. Reading Teacher, 61(3), 255-259

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 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00131725.2012.7075622

Walsh, M. (2010). Multimodal pteracy: what does it mean for classroom practice? Austrapan Journal of Language and pteracy, 33(3), 211–239. Retrieved from http://www.alea.edu.au/documents/item/63

Before I commenced this unit, I was familiar with the first level of digital narrative as described by Walsh (2013) that is traditional literature presented in digital form. As mentioned in Lamb (2011), in a 2010 study of young readers published in Reading Teacher, Lotta Larson found that digital reading devices promote new literacy practices, such as digital note-taking, and provide readers control over how they engage with the text. My understanding of digital literature has drastically changed after this assignment. This assignment gave me good understanding and insight into other forms of digital literature and also the characteristics of a good digital text. According to Walsh (2013, p. 186), one way of evaluating the appropriateness of a digital narrative for literary text is to compare its literary qualities with the text’s digital features and consider how both integrate into a literary text in digital form. Digital text enriched with multimedia material is rapidly spreading out.

After gaining understanding of enhanced e book and interactive books, I believe that it is extremely important for students to experience print and digital format because the experiences that the digital product can offer the child that the print book cannot. This will also in future provide students with the skills to be digitally literate in 21^st century. My understanding

However Yakota & Teale (2014) recommends that as teachers we should examine any potential digital story just to make sure there is no abundance of potentially distracting instances such as decorative fonts that distracts the reader and overlaying word on the illustration as well as the mismatch between what is seen in the illustration and what is said in the text.

Lamb (2011) has influenced me that the affordances of this new form of literature allowed for a positive impact on the way we read and interacted with information in 21st century. In mu future teaching, I aim to use more digibooks for inquiry learning as it is highly appealing and will encourage students’ creativity and motivation. I will also use the nonfiction digibooks for our sustainability club at lunch time for stage 2 students. ABC education digibooks are cost effective and easily accessible.  I thoroughly enjoyed viewing the digibooks on ABC Educational website. I have already asked the IT department at my school to install Animalia in Ipads as there is a free version available and will be beneficial to students.

Yokota (2013) Well-designed digital picture books integrate illustration, text, sound, and sometimes also movement so that each complements the other and, together, they provide a multimedia text experience. The ability to process and produce multimedia texts is central to what it means to be literate in then the 21st century, and interactions with digital picture books is an excellent way to begin building these skills. However, Yokota (2013) cautions that  for digital picture books to play an integral role in early literacy development rather than merely being window dressing, it is important that educators select wisely from an ever- increasing flood of such materials into the market, knowing when a digital choice is appropriate and stands to benefit the child and not allowing nostalgia or assumptions to guide choices (i.e., “if it was a good/well- known children ’ s book, it must be good as an app” kind of thinking, without fully analysing the app’s features).

Digital literature helps the student to gain a better understanding of the abstract content. In my assessment blog 1, I was still very much of an opinion that physical books are better than eBooks, personally for me, but that opinion has changed after this assignment.

School libraries that adapt to the digital needs of their community not only continue to build a reading culture in the school, but facilitate the divergence and convergence in media needed to support motivation, differentiation, a variety of platforms, collaboration and connections necessary for the new learning ecology of the twenty-first century (Gogan & Marcus, 2013; Hay & Foley, 2009; Lamb & Johnson, 2010; Marcoux & Loertscher, 2009). Considering the advancement in digital technology, it is out role as a teacher librarian to integrate and enhance our content of teaching with any new format that comes along. Dobler (2013) advises that it is necessary for children to express various genres and formats of books, both print and digital in lots of different contexts, to prepare them for the wide variety of reading experiences they will encounter in their future. Since this assignment has given me an understanding on evaluation criteria for digital texts, I will be able to make more informed decisions and structured opinions. Overall, this assignment has given me a rich experience in exploring the world of digital literature.

References

Lamb, A. (2011). Reading redefined for a transmedia universe. Learning and leading with technology, 39(3), 12-17. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=67371172&site=ehost-live

O’Connell, J., Bales, J., & Mitchell, P. (2015). [R]Evolution in reading cultures: 2020
vision for school libraries. The Australian Library Journal, 64(3), 194

Walsh, M. (2013). Literature in a digital environment (Ch. 13). In L. McDonald (Ed.), A literature companion for teachers. Marrickville, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA).  https://doms.csu.edu.au/csu/file/863c5c8d-9f3f-439f-a7e3-2c2c67ddbfa8/1/ALiteratureCompanionforTeachers.pdf

Yokota, J. & Teale, W. H. (2014). Picture books and the digital world: educators making informed choices. The Reading Teacher, 34(6). Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/3886534/Picture_Books_and_the_Digital_World_Educators_ Making_Informed_Choices

INF 533: Assessment Blog Task

Using your readings and interaction with the subject to date, develop a statement about your current knowledge and understanding of concepts and practices in digital literature environments, tools and uses, within the context of your work or professional circumstances.

In these unprecedented times, digital world has made it possible for professionals to work from home and students to learn from home making education more accessible and flexible. However, when it comes to reading, I personally prefer reading the traditional way as compared to digitally. For me, browsing a bookstore or library and flicking through books is a social, embodied experience whereas clicking on the screen is not (Sadokierski, 2013).

I am a teacher librarian at K-6 Independent school where there are no eBooks for students or teachers. As a result of this, many children lost access to books during pandemic as some students did not have adequate books to read at home. This has left us to think about the need to provide digital literature to our students. However, the school has subscription for Reading Eggs and ClickView.  Leu (2011, p.6) suggests, literacy is dietic and the traditional nature of literacy will require us to continuously rethink traditional notions of literacy.

Since my experience with using digital literature is limited, I look forward to gain understanding and using it effectively in future. The timing for this course is perfect, in the sense, that it has further emphasised the need for incorporating digital literature in our teaching.

Technology can now be a tool, but it will be incorrect to assume that teachers and students are already digitally literate. The internet has become a fundamental part of information, education and entertainment and therefore ICT should not be taught as a separate subject but should be integrated into all key learning areas. Lamb (2011, p.15) suggests that social technology has become a core element of transmedia storytelling for young adults.

Digital technologies have provided greater access to larger amounts of information, it is our role as teacher librarian to teach students the efficient use of information skills. Digital citizenship is an umbrella term that broadly covers responsible, appropriate behaviour when using technology. But specifically, it can cover anything from “netiquette” to cyber bullying; technology access and the digital divide; online safety and privacy; copyright, plagiarism, and digital law, and more.

Leu (2011, p.6) points out that online reading comprehension is not isomorphic with offline reading comprehension; additional practices, skills, and strategies appear to be required (as cited in Coiro & Dobler, 2007; Leu, Zawilinski, et al., 2007). As teachers we need identify and classify what is quality literature within all the digital variations available (Walsh, 2013, p.186).  When using the print or digital version, it is necessary to consider whether it will enhance students ’understanding and motivate students’ to read and respond further.

Last year for Book week, we used Scholastic story starters web page for students to create their own story. Students were very engaged and innovative in creating the digital version of their story. It was very encouraging to see that students of all abilities participated enthusiastically and were able to express their story using the prompts.

I am looking forward to gain further understanding and apply this knowledge in my role as a teacher librarian.

References

Coiro, J., & Dobler, E. (2007). Exploring the online reading comprehension strategies used by sixth-grade skilled readers to search for and locate information on the Internet. Reading Research Quarterly, 42(2), 214–257

Lamb, A. (2011). Reading redefined for a transmedia universe. Learning and leading with technology, 39(3), 12-17. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=67371172&site=ehost-live

Leu, D.J. et al (2011). The new literacies of online reading comprehension: Expanding the literacy and learning curriculum. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(1)5-14. Doi: 10.1598/JAAL.55.1.1

Sadokierski, Z. (2013, November 12). What is a book in the digital age? [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/what-is-a-book-in-the-digital-age-19071

Walsh, M. (2013). Literature in a digital environment (Ch. 13). In L. McDonald (Ed.), A literature companion for teachers. Marrickville, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA).  https://doms.csu.edu.au/csu/file/863c5c8d-9f3f-439f-a7e3-2c2c67ddbfa8/1/ALiteratureCompanionforTeachers.pdf