A Reseach Proposal and Work in Progress
822_researchproposal (click to download .docx)
According to Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling, digital storytelling is “…combining the longstanding art of telling stories with any of a variety of available multimedia tools, including graphics, audio, video animation, and Web publishing.” In other words, students can pull together a variety of media (most often digital video or digital photographs combined with text or voiceovers) to create a movie that tells a story. The Center for Digital Storytelling emphasizes first person narrative in the kind of stories that are told, and probably this is the most common use in schools. Children can tell their own stories through multimedia. Clearly, this tool can be implemented across subject matters from a new kind of book report, to a story about results to a science experiment, to a retelling of time in history. I am especially interested in the implications of using digital stories is social studies education. This research proposal focuses on finding answers to the following question:
What is the effect of student creation of digital stories on their understanding of history concepts in an elementary setting?
Teaching social studies in a way that provides students with a deep and connected understanding of historical events is constant goal in my teaching. Social studies can seem to young students like a collection of facts and dates that do not relate to their lives. One way of helping students gain a more connected sense of history is to use narrative. Students naturally understand narrative, they have been hearing stories all their lives. I have found when I read children’s literature about a history topic, or lecture in a more narrative form, my students are more engaged and better able to discuss historical events. I would like to use these observations to take using narrative to teach social studies to the next level by allowing students to retell the stories of the past through digital storytelling. We all know the idea that people learn best when given the opportunity to teach. Creating a digital story or short movie about a topic requires a student to think about the best way to communicate or teach it, and I predict that telling the story will help the student learn the information in a very meaningful and memorable way.
My interests in educational technology focus on putting technology into the hands of students. Technology is a powerful way to improve what teachers do, how they teach, what they can show students, but where technology can really change the way students learn is when they can use it to create. Technology allows for simple and relatively inexpensive means of self-expression, creativity, and authenticity in education. Digital storytelling is especially interesting to me because it allows students to bring together so many important skills to convey information in a creative and entertaining way. It allows children to be artists and in this case historians.
In addition to the effects on student understanding of historical concepts, I am interested in the other benefits of student created digital stories. At a time when creativity is becoming a more and more important skill in career success, it is often being ignored in schools (likely due to the pressures of testing and NCLB). I am passionate about finding ways to develop creativity and emphasize its importance and giving students the power to create their own story seems like a step in the right direction. Students will also gain valuable technological and problem solving skills as well as experiencing the importance of collaboration and developing the social skills necessary to work as a part of a team.
