Digital Storytelling

There are four skills essential for the 21st century, also known as the four C's: critical thinking, creative thinking, communication, and collaboration. Critical thinking and creative thinking are skills used to solve problems and communication and collaboration are used to deal with people. Digital storytelling is a process that incorporates all four of these skills. It is reflective and encourages critical thinking and creativity, and, also adds an extension to creativity by using a technological medium. During the writing process, the author uses a storyboard to plan out the digital story by connecting the narrative to images. This is how the author collborates, by producing and repoting. Digital stories are intentionally made public by living on the internet, thus, the author communicates to its audience via the digital story. 

Digital storytelling serves as a educational tool for the author and the audience. I love John Dewey’s perspective about learning and reflection. One of his theories pointed out that we don’t learn from experience, but we learn from reflecting on experience. The author of the digital story undergoes reflection during the writing and story board process. The audience also learns by reflecting on watching the digital story. Another theorist, Lev Vygotsky, claimed the we learn through social interaction in a cultural context. And, as we learn, we internalize what we've learned through the interactions we have with our peers, teachers, parents, and other experts. Because digital stories are created by our peers and experts, they serve as a powerful cultural tool that has the ability to shape our culture. There’s a reason why YouTube is very successful. I believe it’s because we connect and learn from the digital storytellers.

(more details about Vygotsky's Social Development Theory in the video below)

Digital storytelling in the curriculum is a great empowerment tool that also makes learning fun. I believe it’s very important to incorporate technological devices and skills in our school systems. If younger students learn how to navigate current technology, they will practice and learn the four C’s. I already see this happening with my own kids, who attend a public school. My kindergartener is already learning how to write in a writer’s workshop taught in her class. She also uses the computer to play a game where she identifies letters in words and matches them to images. My third grader uses an iPad in her class often, and has already learned how to use Google Drive; she sends her work to her teacher via Google Drive from her iPad. Right now she is working on a project that she’ll need to make a presentation in front of her class from her iPad via AppleTV. As students grow older, it's important for them to understand how to leverage their skills in technology by relating them to the four C's.