Using Digital storytelling in VET: experiences and reflections
In the November edition of the ICVET eZine, Guy Kemshal-Bell reported on the Digital Storytelling workshop run by Lyn Connors, Elizabeth Jones and myself at the ICVET ‘Learning Powerhouse’ conference. For a general overview of Digital Storytelling see the conference paper from our session Telling Tales: A peek into the world of Digital Storytelling (link below). In this short paper I explore further the use of multimedia as a tool across VET to more effectively engage and meet the needs of learners in a technology-rich and increasingly technology-accessible society. What we are seeing I suggest is the rise of a new pedagogy; an approach for a modern IT learning environment.
Digital stories are multimodal presentations, combining images, voice, music and sometimes, written text using a number of suitable software programs. They are short and engaging, quick and easy to create, and offer a human element. Audiences immediately connect with a good digital story; they feel inspired to give it a go themselves. Without fail teachers find the methodology immediately appealing, accessible and useful for supporting learners. Comments such as ‘I was feeling so stale, this is so refreshing – I can’t wait to get back and try it’ are common.
Traditionally digital stories have been used to capture the lives, emotions, experiences and the ‘journeys’ or transformations of everyday people. They are personal, intimate, and highly engaging. They are being used by media production units, health organisations, youth programs and community development groups. In adapting the concept as a tool for VET teaching and learning, issues and challenges will arise, but it is already happening; the digital storytelling tsunami is on its way to your college!
Immediate uses
The relevance of digital storytelling for communication courses, and literacy and English language curricula is self evident. Inspired teachers are taking advantage of what Ohler (2006) describes as digital storytelling’s ‘interplay of literacies’ – (digital, oral, written and media) recognised as essential in today’s world.
In the North Coast Institute of TAFE, Lisa Rushton and Julie Wykeham explored the use of digital storytelling with two teams of English language and literacy teachers during a 2005 LearnScope project…
As well as sharing our own productions, we looked at how literacy students from a range of backgrounds have found digital storytelling. Several team members have been working with a group of talented young women with disabilities that impact on their literacy, who have produced snapshots of their lives in short but very effective stories.
We are finding young students are using Moviemaker most creatively, following their interests in both images and music to put together some very entertaining productions. There are many more possibilities for using digital storytelling with mature age literacy students and English language students who, as we all know, have the most amazing stories to tell
(Rushton 2005)
Lynette Connors and Elizabeth Jones also in the North Coast Institute, have used digital storytelling with indigenous arts and general education students. ‘Once trust has been established,’ Lyn explained at our Learning Powerhouse conference session, ‘Digital Storytelling can be used to help students with challenging personal journeys. You’ve got to allow your students to explore – don’t put them in a box.’
In Arts and Media, Elizabeth has had positive outcomes with Indigenous students creating individual stories that can be used as a CV. ‘This allows the artist to showcase selected artworks and combine that with their statement, either written or voiced… the story becomes a visual presentation for marketing and documenting their works', Elizabeth says (Kemshal-Bell 2005).
Digital stories allow an intimate human connection and they are also proving to be a particularly successful medium for use with disengaged learners. During his 2005 LearnScope Individual project Paulis Cheung, from Sydney Institute, investigated the use of digital stories with youth at risk. The approach is proving particularly useful as a tool for anger management as the young people voice their experiences and emotions through the medium.
All these examples focus very much on giving learners a ‘voice’, communication, and the development of basic computer and multimedia skills as a by-product, via what I label as ‘learning by stealth’, but how relevant is digital storytelling for other aspects and areas of VET teaching and learning?
Extending the methodology into other areas of VET
Traditionally adult education has relied on written text as the primary mode for teaching and learning. Although we know that many learners struggle with reading and writing, our courses continue to be heavily based on written handbooks, text books, handouts/notes, course instructions including what to do if you need help, written tests and assignments. How many learners are disadvantaged? How relevant are these tools in an increasingly online, multimodal world and global community? Are our current courses adequately preparing learners for the new and emerging literacies and media?
How well do our curricula capture the skills involved in effectively using new media and styles of online communication? Which is more relevant in today’s world - a traditional written report or an engaging multimedia ‘story’ which uses carefully selected visuals and a succinct oral text to present an effective message that reaches and engages an often time-poor audience?
Despite its appeal the use of Digital ‘Storytelling’ in VET requires as much critical reflection and consideration as any other teaching/learning methodology. It will take time to adjust our thinking and procedures to suit this new approach. What do we call this new pedagogy based on/designed for use in modern IT learning environment? Certainly the term ‘storytelling’ won’t sit comfortably with many VET practitioners and we are already way beyond traditional ‘storytelling’ in our uses. We will particularly need to rethink aspects of curriculum structures such as assessment criteria. If students prefer to capture their learning via multimedia projects or digital stories rather than in more conventional written styles such as reports or essays, then we’ll need to experiment with how it can be used for broader communication purposes.
In a 2005 interview Jason Ohler describes how, with the use of digital storytelling, ‘we are in between two very powerful models: storytelling, with its powerful ability to engage and teach students, and critical thinking, with its ability to turn students into thinking, reflective people, consumers, voters’ … and that by blending the two it can offer a ‘powerful pedagogy’. Being ‘literate’ in today’s world must in part at least be about having skills in a wide range of communication styles and media, and knowing when to use a particular style to suit the desired purpose, audience and context. Having the ability to identify where on the continuum particular media pieces should lie is an important consideration in these critical media literacy skills.
Those of us who have lived and worked under the influence of genre theory have often considered written text as falling into one of a range of distinct genre types; report, argument, analysis, or narrative for example. Narrative or ‘storytelling’ as used in traditional digital storytelling, is designed to entertain and person-oriented, based on life experiences using dialogue and familiar language (Tonjes et al, 1999). However, the theory is intrinsically a written application and the technology and the multi-modal outcome transform both narrative and report genre; neither need to conform to the constraints of their written forms. Perhaps what will evolve is a parallel theory for multimedia with a purpose that more clearly defines acceptability of specific features – things like colour, text size/type, page layout will be more important (Warren 2006).
To consider Ohler’s model further, he stresses that we should not ‘think about "story vs report" in "either-or" terms’ – every media project or story, he says, ‘is going to be a particular blend of storyform and documentary or report, so it's more effective to think about media in terms where they fall on a continuum’. ‘On one end is “report or documentary,” which represents a product typically associated with the presentation and assessment of facts based on research; on the other end is narrative or “story,” which can also include research and facts, but is typically valued as an information container that has the ability to inspire and engage’.
He tells teachers ‘that in education we need to aim somewhere in the middle’ (Ohler 2006). Finding the optimum position is dependent on both analysing audience and context, but also on identifying the aspects of ‘story’ that maintain audience engagement beyond which a project simply becomes a multimedia instructional ‘text’. What are those aspects of engagement? They are often hard to describe although we all know when a story ‘works’. Interactivity and inter connected media have greatly developed and will continue to do so.
Jason Ohler (2005) describes the two ‘pedagogical frontiers for education’ as this revised notion of storytelling and communication via new media. Through access to suitable computers and multimedia equipment, and a considered use of multimedia communication there is the potential to enable students to situate the theories and concepts they are exposed to in their VET courses in events and practices, they gain skills in multimedia through relevant projects, and they communicate in a multimodal way producing messages that are far more accessible, engaging and appealing than traditional written texts.
As we take advantage of the new opportunities that digital storytelling is bringing to learners and our teaching practice it’s important to remain critical and reflective. We should treat digital storytelling as just one tool in our education kitbag; one communication option for learners to access. Be prepared to use digital storytelling for some uses and contexts and not in others, provide choice to learners and gain feedback on what works and what doesn’t. As Elizabeth Jones (2005) reminded us at our conference session ‘technology races ahead, presenting us all with more questions than there are answers – it’s important that we maximise the potential of digital storytelling but also make sure that technology is seen as a tool to help us tell stories and doesn’t take over the main focus of learning.'
How are you using digital storytelling in your teaching practice? What issues have you encountered and how have you tackled them? Let us know and continue the conversation. Have your say on the dedicated Blog space to reply to this article.
Newcomers to Digital Storytelling will find a useful introduction and guidance on our new wiki listed below.
Join in the conversation
- a wiki by and for teachers
- a range of digital storytelling websites are listed on the DST websites page
- click on EDIT to add content to the wiki
National Digital Storytelling network site
- you must register with EdNA groups to post content to this network site
References
JAY, R & Connors, L 2005, Telling Tales; a peek into the world of digital storytelling, The Learning Powerhouse, TAFE NSW ICVET Conference papers, 2005
KEMSHAL-BELL, G 2005, 'I’m telling’: The rise and rise of digital storytelling, The Learning Powerhouse, TAFE NSW ICVET Conference, ICVET eZine November 2005
OHLER, J 2005, Agency for instructional technology eZine, Featured interview, Vol 2, No 10, November 2005
OHLER, J 2006, Digital and traditional storytelling; workshop information and public resource
CUMMINGS, S 2001, Narrative and Genre, Ling. 124, January 17, 2001
