Digital Story
Las Tres Palmeras
Student Learning and Pedagogy
The first story “Las Tres Palmeras” is an example of a classic children’s tale converted into a digital story. In Spanish 30 one of the main study components is short stories and literature. This presentation therefore fulfills a cultural component by introducing students to authentic Peruvian fables as well as acts as an anticipatory set to get students starting to think about their own stories they will be writing.
The second digital story is much simpler and concise. This series of cartoon frames introduces student to the course and gives a brief description of some of the key components that makes this Spanish 20 class different from others they have heard of in the past.
Rationale: functionality and requirements.
The tool I used to tell “Las Tres Palmeras” was “Slide”. This digital storytelling tool worked great for this project as it was easy to use and could incorporate text, images, and audio. I chose this tool due to the multiple literacies that it addresses and due to the ease of use and production. I think that this tool would be great for students to use as well for creating their own digital stories due to the gentle learning curve.
Toondoo is a very fun tool to use for creating online cartoons. Although cartoons can be created quickly and simply, it is very easy to get caught up in the program and spend a lot of time working within it. I created this toondoo the first time I used the site and felt a great sense of accomplishment with it (I went so far to print it off and showed it to a fair number of staff members!) I think that students would feel a similar sense of accomplishment when they see their fun, yet stylish-looking production that allows them to express their creativity and publish their work.
Strengths
Some of the strengths of a story telling approach are it allows students to see continuity in writing and acts as a mnemonic strategy to help students better remember. Storytelling is an important part of a second language class and fits in with the majority of outcomes within our curriculum. Storytelling provides students with an alternate way of expressing themselves and leads to more authentic language production.
Limitations
A limitation to storytelling is that it cannot, and should not, be used for everything. Students require variation in strategies and even successful strategies such as digital storytelling, if overused, will become ineffective.