The Importance Of Digital Storytelling

Combining the old age tradition of storytelling with the latest technology lead to compelling tool that motivates students to read more and write better. The approach is called digital storytelling. It is a good way to engage students in both traditional and innovative way of telling a story. It is emerging as a way to shape narrative and facilitates efforts to capture classroom moments for learners to reflect upon and revise practice, as well as to develop teaching consciousness. Digital stories revolve around a chosen theme and often contain a particular viewpoint. They are typically just a few minutes long and have a variety of uses, including telling of personal tales, recounting of historical events, or as a means to inform or instruct

This approach combines the use of technology with the benefits and skills of storytelling, e.g. selecting, comparing, inferring, arranging and revising. It is introduced as an approach to encourage and embed student reflection on the activities in which they were engaged, recognizing that reflection can be enhanced as a collaborative process. It employs digital technology to construct narrative. Using digital technologies, students can turn a one-dimensional writing composition into a digital story that can be published and shared to a small, intimate audience or with the world. It is a process that blends media to enrich and enhance the written or spoken word. It may have a narration overlay and a music background and may combine images, audio, and video to tell a story or make a factual presentation ( Frazel ,2010; Jenkins and Lonsdale, 2007 ;Miller,2004;Sylvester and Greenidge,

These learning strategies can be facilitated through digital storytelling activities. They are attracting a great deal of attention from teachers nowadays. To support their views, Sadik (2008) indicated that educators at all levels can use digital storytelling to support students’ learning by encouraging them to organize and express their ideas in an individual and meaningful way. Also,Clarke and Adam (2011),Psomos and Kordaki (2012), Skinner and Hagood (2008) confirm that digital storytelling helps students work in groups and strengthen the bonds between students in class, and at the same time between students and their teacher, students acquire several technological skills through storytelling, creating digital stories helps the integration of students with learning difficulties through taking with this opportunity an active role, and the ability to narrate .

Müller ,et al.(2010) indicate that interactive digital storytelling helps teachers to use role-playing methods in classroom. Students can develop and test dialogues that are correctly spoken out and enacted. It fosters thinking in alternatives and functional equivalences, and provides a means for self-directed learning. In addition, Frazel (2010) summarizes the value of digital storytelling