2. Purposes

Multiple Purposes of Digital Stories in ePortfolios

Here I address the issue of why develop digital stories, or the Multiples Purposes for adding digital stories to ePortfolios. Where I have examples of digital stories, I have provided web links in an online article on my website. The movies on that page require QuickTime to view.

Introduction Of Self

Voice & Personality

The Northwest Regional Education Lab (2001) defines Voice (in its 6+1 Trait® Writing Model) as follows:

”The Voice is the writer coming through the words, the sense that a real person is speaking to us and cares about the message. It is the heart and soul of the writing, the magic, the wit, the feeling, the life and breath. When the writer is engaged personally with the topic, he/she imparts a personal tone and flavor to the piece that is unmistakably his/hers alone. And it is that individual something–different from the mark of all other writers–that we call voice.”

Voice, as defined above, is often missing from electronic portfolios, both literally and rhetorically. A digital story provides that voice: listening to the author, we hear a real person, getting a sense of their unique personality.

Legacy

Digital stories can provide us with an opportunity to leave a legacy of our family stories for those who come after us. Legacy stories are usually told about a person or place.

Biography

A biography provides the facts about a life, whether of the storyteller or another person.

Memoir

Whereas a legacy story is told for or about another person or place, a memoir is very personal, told in the first person, focusing on the memories of the storyteller. Memoirs are autobiographical in nature, but are much more personal and reflective. They are usually much longer than a typical digital story.

Reflection/Metacognition

I am especially excited about the use of digital storytelling as a strategy to facilitate reflection in electronic portfolios. According to the Digital Storytelling Association, digital storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. Digital stories derive their power by weaving images, music, narrative and voice together, thereby giving deep dimension and vivid color to characters, situations, experiences, and insights.

Donald Schon (1988) discussed storytelling as a mode of reflection: "...for storytelling is the mode of description best suited to transformation in new situations of action.... Stories are products of reflection, but we do not usually hold onto them long enough to make them objects of reflection in their own right.... When we get into the habit of recording our stories, we can look at them again, attending to the meanings we have built into them and attending, as well, to our strategies of narrative description."

Janice McDrury and Maxine Alterio (2002), two educators from New Zealand have written a book called Learning through Storytelling in Higher Education in which they outline their theory of storytelling as an effective learning tool. They have linked the art of storytelling with reflective learning processes supported by the literature on both reflection and learning as well as making meaning through storytelling. The authors propose storytelling as a theory of learning within a socio-cultural framework and introduce a Storytelling Pathways Model and their Reflective Learning through Storytelling Model. As individuals and institutions approach the portfolio as a story of learning, it is important to consider the theoretical underpinnings of this process. McDrury and Alterio provide the theoretical support for adding storytelling into the e-portfolio process, as they lay out their theory:

...when we tell our own practice stories and listen to those of others, then work together to process them deeply and critically, we connect in ways which enrich self, relationship and practice, Through these connections we construct new knowledge and advance our understanding of the relationships we construct and are constructed by. For these reasons we end our journey convinced that storytelling can, and should, be viewed as a theory of learning. (p.175)

I have been exploring the many uses of digital stories in electronic portfolios. An ePortfolio is a purposeful collection of work that demonstrates effort, progress and achievement over time, stored in an electronic container (CD, DVD, WWW). In this context and in terms of the technology, a digital story is a digital video clip, told in the author's own voice, illustrated mostly with still images, with an optional music track added for emotional effect. Rhetorically, a digital story is a personal narrative that may show the author’s identity: strengths, weaknesses, achievements, disappointments, learning experiences, passions, and hopes for the future; in other words: reflection.

While reflection is the “heart and soul” of a portfolio, digital storytelling is a highly motivating strategy that can make reflection concrete and visible. Some definitions of reflection:

  • Careful thought, especially the process of reconsidering previous actions, events, or decisions; an idea or thought, especially one produced by careful consideration of something. (Encarta)

  • One of the defining characteristics of surface learning is that it does not involve reflection. (Moon).

  • Reflection is an active process of witnessing one’s own experience in order to take a closer look at it, sometimes to direct attention to it briefly, but often to explore it in greater depth.(MIT)

  • Reflection is what allows us to learn from our experiences: it is an assessment of where we have been and where we want to go next. (Wolf)

Transition

Some learners reflect on the major changes or transitions in their lives. Reflection can help us make sense of these changes. Telling digital stories could also help the transition to retirement or any other major life change.

Decision & Direction

Digital stories can be used to either weigh the options in a decision to be made, or document the decision-making process. Stories can help us shape our direction or our preferred future.

Benchmarking Development

In a podcast published by Mike Searson (Kean University) in advance of the 2006 SITE conference, Joe Lambert made these comments about digital stories in portfolios:

“The idea of portfolio is storytelling... looking back at what you've done, assessing what you intended to do, what you did, and what you think about it after the fact. To me that is in the form of a story: what did I hope, what did I do, and what insight did I draw out of that. And in that sense, the digital story format as a sort of PowerPoint on steroids, would be an appropriate way for education to take a snapshot of the educational process, for my ideal world, at the same point that people are being tested: in 5th grade and 7th grade and 11th grade, and getting into college, surviving the first year of college, and getting out of college, and into graduate school. It seems to me that at each point a digital story snapshot would be an extremely appropriate part of a portfolio to tell you in a very succinct, entertaining, effective and emotionally engaging way where the students are and we would learn as much about them [as from tests] and we would have a form that people actually want to use or see.”

Change over time

An important element of an electronic portfolio is to maintain a collection of work over time, so that the learner can recognize when growth and change has occurred. Children often forget what it is like not to know how to do something. By seeing earlier work, they can reflect on the changes they see in their own performance. The recognition of this change has the potential to increase students’ self esteem.

Rich Digital Artifacts

The story types described above are constructed as part of the portfolio development process of reflection. The initial phase of portfolio development is the collection of artifacts, or pieces of work that are created in the course of ordinary school work or professional experience. These artifacts in electronic portfolios often take the form of text or images; a digital video clip adds another dimension to this collection.

Evidence of Collaboration

Much of the work in both schools and the workplace is the result of collaboration. To document the results of team efforts, a digital story could explain each person's role in the process.

Documentary

A digital video can take the place of a research paper or PowerPoint presentation. These stories take on the characteristics of a documentary, often fact-based without emotional content.

Record of Experience

In many learning activities, such as a field experience in teacher education, there may not be a concrete product that can be represented in a discrete artifact. A digital story could be used to reflect on and document an experience in a format much richer than just text and images. A digital story could provide the final evidence of a project-based learning activity, especially if digital pictures are captured as part of the experience. As John Dewey said, “We don’t learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience.”

Oral Language

Whether for students learning to speak in a second language, or early childhood students learning to read in their native language, recordings of speaking and reading aloud have often been been documented through either tape recording or live presentation before an assessor. A digital story could provide another approach that allows learners to record their voice, speaking or reading out loud at different stages of development, demonstrating growth over time. A "podcast" could be an audio-only digital story without the visual components.

How does the Digital Storytelling Process Support the Curriculum?

Digital stories may be developed for a variety of purposes (see the next section). There are many areas in the Teacher Education curriculum where teacher candidates could develop reflective digital stories:

  • Illustrate elements of their Philosophy of Education

  • Share insights from Field Experiences and Student Teaching

  • Anywhere a Powerpoint presentation would be used to present content

There are also many K-12 Curriculum Standards that are supported by digital storytelling. Here are three articles that discuss the role of digital storytelling in a standards-based curriculum. These three articles could be used in a Jigsaw Activity to help Teacher Candidates understand the role of digital storytelling in the K-12 classroom.

Making a Case for Digital Storytelling By David Jakes Dec 1, 2005

Standards-Proof Your Digital Storytelling Efforts By David Jakes Mar 1, 2006

Digital Storytelling Finds Its Place in the Classroom by Tom Banaszewski January/February 2002