Abstract:

This contribution is part of the studies and research program carried out on a narrative technique such as digital storytelling (DST), used in educational contexts and educational organizations. Stories meant as collaborative digital teaching tools require a narrative-game type of learning. Using the technique of DST will promote new forms of learning "mediated" by new technologies. In fact, the production of new knowledge takes place through the manipulation and "editing" of multimedia objects (sounds, images, video). In this way digital technologies affect the creative process and then the construction and production of knowledge. Experimenting with the new technique of digital storytelling requires a research work on new techniques of expression, such as digital, new languages and expressive grammar applied to all forms of communication.
The contribution aims to compare data collected from international literature and case studies, in particular, taken from American school system, with data collected upon a job carried out in selected schools of Puglia region.
The experience was carried out within Mediaevo program, that is a 2 million Euros research project funded by the Apulia region, which is proposed to develop a multi-channel and multi-edutainment platform of cultural heritage. Within the project was carried out a study and research to develop a methodology and a research protocol to co-develop and co-build a digital game, open learning environment, with Puglia region students.
The direct involvement of potential "users" of the game, that is, secondary school students, allowed to have an “original and creative” hypothesis for the design of a narrative framework. The students were directly involved in creating digital stories set in the medieval period. This original digital stories has created a path that began to be an object of medieval material culture and developed in a creative way. The storytellers have manipulated digital multimedia objects based on a shared digital storyboard. Recent studies of digital storytelling deepen the relationship between collaborative writing of storyboards and disciplinary learning. The collaborative approach to creative writing of the storyboard has promoted the development of certain skills: literacy and verbal skills, technological skills and artistic sensibility. The work of handling of a series of codes and expression techniques, the combination of written words, sounds, pictures and the final work of building digital stories using simple transitions has helped the creation of a space for reflection on communication codes used.

According to a teaching perspective of a constructivist origin, students have been involved in an active and participatory learning. The students involved have shown creativity in both the methods of construction of the story and narrative ability (graphics processing, Photos, Video cameras, literary productions, etc.) than in the use of digital tools and new technologies.

The prospect of a possible student centered production of digital storytelling in the school context could be an innovation of the processes of teaching-learning.

Keywords:

digital storytelling, media, storyboard, cooperative learning, game based e-learning.