Digital Storytelling - connecting people through language, culture and creativity, Presentation given by Kirsty Mc Geoch at AFMLTA conference Sydney 2009

1. Digital Storytelling
in second language learning and teaching
Kirsty McGeoch
University of Sydney, Australia
Presentation at AFMLTA, Sydney, July 12, 2009.

2. Juergen‟s
Digital Story
juergen_videostory.wmv
** All images and music are either copyright-free or permission has
been obtained.

3. Juergen‟s digital story
Personally meaningful
Written by him
Narrated by him
Images and music chosen by him
2:45

4. Background
10 steps
Findings

5. Background

6. The Center for Digital Storytelling
www.storycenter.org

8. 7 elements of digital storytelling
(Center for Digital Storytelling)
1. Point of the story
2. Dramatic question
3. Emotional content
4. Gift of your voice
5. Power of soundtrack
6. Economy
7. Pacing

9. Uses in
Education

10. Multiliteracies and
content in K-12.
(Banaszewski, 2002, 2005; Ohler, 2005)

11. Agency and self-
esteem in youth.
(Hlubinka, 2003; Hull & Katz, 2006)

12. Reflective practice among
school students and in
teacher professional
development. (Barrett, 2006).

13. Intercultural Education
training of pre-service
teachers.
(Carroll & Carney, 2005).

14. Multimodal expression
with second language
writers.
(Nelson, 2006)

15. What about using it in
ELICOS settings?
(ELICOS = English Language Intensive Courses
for Overseas Students).

16. •
Institute of Continuing and TESOL Education –
University of Queensland
25 English language learners (pre-advanced to advanced)
aged 18 – 50 over 2 action research cycles
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Mexico,
Austria, Holland, Uruguay & Saudi Arabia

17. My timeframe
First time around…..
20 hours (4 hours a week for 5 weeks).
… very rushed indeed

18. Subsequently……
27.5 hours (5.5 hours a week for 5 weeks)

19. 10 steps

20. 1. Preparing
myself

21. Making my
own digital
stories.

22. 2. Building
the group

23. Hello, my
name is
Kirsty.

24. What are you really
good at?

25. Based on a poem by George
Ella Lyon, 1999

26. “After doing the activities
/games in the first lecture all
of us were able to get rid of
most of our shyness and a
nice climate to work was
found.”
Juergen, Austria

27. 3. Orientation
towards the
project

28. Showing my
digital story

29. “It gave
guidelines…………”
Cecilia, Hong Kong

30. “ And when we see someone
trying to introduce themselves.
We feel relaxed and we can
open our minds to them. So I
think it made me feel closer to
you.”
Hana, Korea

31. “Because you told
your story first, so
you are one of us.”
Robin, China

32. “…the most important
fact for the motivation
was your video story –
I just wanted to have
one of my own.”
Juergen, Austria

33. watched digital stories and
highlighted the elements of the genre

34. 4. First drafts

35. talk &
free writing

36. The date of a major achievement, the time
there was a particularly bad setback,
meeting a special person, the birth of a
child, the end of a relationship, the death
of a loved one are all examples of these
fork-in-the-road experiences. Right now, at
this second, write about a decisive
moment in your life. You have 10 minutes.
(Digital Storytelling Cookbook, Feb 2007, p. 21).

37. Look at past
scripts

38. The story circle

39. “I just need one good idea….”

40. What‟s the
focus
of my story?

41. “ In my situation I didn't have a real life
changing event so I summarized my life
and tried to focus on my life as a student…
But with the lack of a real interesting focus
I think I'm going to rewrite my story and tell
more about my choice to study Law and
how I first thought to study science in
contrairy to all the people in my family who
have been studying Law.” Michael
(Holland).

42. trust

43. Because we share our
stories so we know each
other so we don’t need to
shame [sic] or shy.
Chan (Korea)

44. A
chance
to
open
up

45. “At first, we need to talk about our
story, we sit around each other, it was
really nervous actually and I thought
“could I talk this story like this – it is
kind of my secret story, but once I did,
it feels like much better because I talk
something I hid it before.”
Chan, Korea

46. I don’t know. It’s like go to
therapy – but cheaper. Really,
I never talk about this with
anyone. I don’t like to talk
about this. This time, I tried to
tell – not all – but a little bit. I
feel better with that.
Ana, Mexico

47. Any resistance?

48. Hye-young‟s
digital story
Hyeyoung's digital story.wmv

49. 5. Further
development
of scripts

50. 300
words

51. x6
(or more)

52. peer review

53. “…..generally when I stay in the
classroom, even though I don’t
have a good understanding I
usually don’t ask them, but in the
group discussion everyone asked
some points they don’t know
about that….. Because it is
about their life.” Jina, Korea

55. “At that time I had
enough time to rewrite
again. That gave me
confidence.”
Betty, Korea.

56. “I wrote my
fingers to the
bone.”
Yoon, Korea

57. “I spent normally more than 4 hours
on every Wednesday and Sunday
before your class for editing my
script. In addition, while I was doing
it, I often met Jaslene through MSN
messenger doing same task until
quite late.”
Yoon, Korea

58. “I didn’t care… (about writing in
the past) I found that so boring –
I don’t like it, I’m not going to use
it, I just want to talk. With this, I
realised that it is very important.
Sometimes I need to
communicate with people and I
have to do that in writing.”
Clara, Mexico

59. “I have to go to the library,
borrow a book to check the
tense. I never , never, never
do that until this time because
was worried about that so it
was really good for my
English”.
Clara, Mexico

60. …….the class blog

61. “Because I read the
stories of the others and
I found that my story is
not good enough and I
changed.” Max, Hong Kong.

62. I went to the library to check the culture
connection. I like it – it is a place to share
our stuff. Another reason I want to read
them, I know that at the end of the course
we will see our movies and I want – I’m
afraid there are some words or sentence I
don’t understand, so I want to read them
first. Because – if you don’t understand
particular words, I could get the wrong
feeling about the movie. I want to know
their story fist then watching it.
Nicole, China

63. yoona said... I absolutely can
understand your feeling because I
did that same as you and still
often. May be through your digital
story, I belive I might know how
you could change it. I looking
forward to yours!
August 8, 2008 10:56 PM – From our class
blog.

64. 6 Storyboards
and images

66. Reading
images

67. While I concur with Kress (2003) that "the
world told is a different world to the world
shown," (p. 1) I would point out ... that the
possibility exists for the "world told" to
be told in a way that is substantially more
powerful and authentic, from the
perspective of the author, when it is also
shown.
(Nelson, 2006, p. 67)

68. Chan‟s
digital story
A SIGNIFICANT PERSON - by Chan.wmv

69. 7 Voiceovers

70. Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

71. audio

72. “I haven’t heard my voice
before in English….., so for me
it was very useful because I
could listen to my mistakes. I
know that I have mistakes but I
didn’t listen to them before.”
Dany, Mexico

73. “It was very helpful for
intornation and it is still very
helpful not to forget the
intornation or accent while I
stay at home.”
Jina, Korea

74. 8. Choose your
soundtrack

76. 9. Putting it all
together

77. Windows
Movie Maker

78. Rough cut viewing

79. 10 Final screening

80. “Nice, funny, time-intensive, worthy!
interesting, patient, suffering, hard,
bright, happy, delighted, stressful,
original, meaningful, tiring, exciting,
unforgettable, challenging, heart-
warming, thoughtful, hardworking,
creative, useful, enjoyable, fantastic,
tough but very interesting, curious,
adventurous, awesome, fabulous,
great, emotional, motivated,
different, wonderful.”

81. “I did it”
Robin, China

82. What were
those 10
steps again??

83. 1. Prepare myself
2. Build and bond the group
3. Orient the group by viewing digital
stories
4. First drafts & story circle
5. Script development
6. Storyboards and images
7. Pronunciation practice and voiceovers
8. Choosing a soundtrack
9. Compiling the movie
10. Screening

84. Emerging
findings

85. Improved
language
skills?

86. After participating in this project I think I
have improved my English:
agree strongly Total out of
agree 18
respondents
in general 16 1 17
reading 4 - 4
listening 10 3 13
writing 12 4 16
grammar 9 3 12
vocabulary 11 2 13
speaking 10 7 17
pronunciation 5 13 18

87. Beyond
„language
goals‟ to „life
goals‟?
(Stevick (1998) p. 166 cited in Arnold (1999) p. 3)

88. Understanding
the self and
other…..

89. “Before starting, I
thought a lot to seek
something that I want
to share. The more I
did, the clearer I saw
myself. I realized
what is important to
me and what I
treasure most, as
well as what should I
do in the following
few years.”
Nicole, China

90. “It’s a kind of
knowing more
about myself.”
Betty, Korea.

91. “I love myself
while making this
story.”
(Jamie, Korea)

92. “To listen to others
stories can learn
different the way of
thinking.”
Lin, China

93. I think participating in this digital
storytelling exchange helped me to….
…..Improve my English,
empathy with classmate’s
feeling, understanding other
cultures…
Betty, Korea

94. At the first time I thought Hiro disliked
me, but it's from his unique personality.
He had his special world in his mind. In
the class we had to talk and share
ideas. That helped understand his own
thinking. As so far, we absolutely
improved our relationship. At the last
day, I took the photo with him. I'd never
imagened at the first day of our class.

95. Sense of community

96. “ I really feel like we are a
family, to do the whole thing
and show each other our own
story – it make each other feel
warm. I really think we have
been close friends. So that‟s
why I loved these classes.”
Nicole,China

97. “ Some people revealed some
private things and after
discussing our topic we can
have a more deep
conversation with each other
during the breaking time.”
Jina, Korea

99. The self and L2
investment

100. “ It was good for motivate
actually for purpose of learning
english. It's about life, and
once we start to talk about life,
english plays in a big role to go
ahead in the future.”
Jina, Korea

101. “Actually, my parents in Korea
don‟t know exactly what I am
doing down here. They always
suspicious about my
behaviour. ….After showing
this (digital story) they are
more reassured, relieved.”
Jina, Korea

102. “you will remember it if you see
it in two year, I will remember
every single person and funny
moments – I think that was the
motivation for everyone to
work that hard.”
Juergen, Austria

103. “Even until now during
studying, whenever I had
got tired and stressed, I
often saw my digital story
encouraged me to keep
studying.” Yoon, Korea

104. “It was really quite good
because we were really
self-motivated. All we
really want to do, we did
it hard.”
Chan, Korea

105. “I do not consider it just
a project, as a course to
gain some marks. I want
to do it from the bottom
of my heart.”
Nicole, China.

106. “So when I showed the
digital story I was very
proud of me. Also I thought I
got the best present from
AU.”
Betty, Korea

107. Identity texts
Cummins, 2006;
Norton, (in press)

108. “Teaching and learning which goes
beyond transmitting knowledge into the
realms of creative experiences, and which
mobilises deeply-felt shifts in
consciousness, can transform our
understanding of self, of others and the
complexities of the life of the mind.”
Empathic Intelligence. Roslyn Arnold
(2005), p. 12.

110. Ryota‟s
“in a flash”
digital story
RYOTA.wmv
*Made with Photostory3

111. Digital Storytelling
For links to digital storytelling resources go to my blog and
website:
L2digitalstorytelling.blogspot.com
kirsty.mcgeoch@gmail.com
The University of Sydney, Australia
Credits: istockphoto, www.sxc.hu/, www.flickr.com/ Kevinzim