Sara Armstrong of the Thornburg Center shared a presentation at the T+L2 conference in Denver in October 2005 entitled, “Digital Storytelling: Demonstrating Deep Understanding.” In his blog post about the preso, Jim Dornberg noted that Sara emphasized the following 21st century literacy skills addressed by school (and out of school) assignments involving digital storytelling:
- cultural literacy
- global awareness
- managing projects
- interactive communication
- social responsibility
- state of the art results
I extend these points by contending that digital storytelling can be FUN, engaging, personally rewarding, and even life-changing. We all have unique voices capable of meaningful and powerful communication, yet in school students are rarely asked to truly express their own inner voice. As humans we are inherently social beings, although of course we vary in how “social” we individually desire to be. The ability to socially communicate through a variety of methods is a “hard-wired” capacity, however.
We need to both invite and challenge students to make their own voices heard with 21st century technology tools. These can involve blogs, podcasts, digital photo stories created with free tools like PhotoStory3, iMovie, or other resources. By using technology tools to document and share these stories with a global audience via the Internet, we invite students to become part of a global conversation. For social beings, doesn’t that type of invitation seem too good to be true? Yet this is a reality available for learners in the Internet-connected, web 2.0 world of 2006.
Sara is the editor of “Edutopia: Success Stories for Learning in the Digital Age,” an excellent book I used as a reference last summer in my “Advanced Integration of Technology into the Curriculum” course.
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