Abstract:

Digital Storytelling has gained its popularity in recent decades with the rise of the information technology, particularly the Web 2.0 technology. It is often recommended as an effective approach to develop the 21st century competences in both formal and informal settings. There are, however, few empirical research reports that detail the design of digital story telling in a subject-based and/or interdisciplinary instructional context in a manner that will inform other practitioners in the field. This study reports on the design and development of a two-year digital story project in a primary Chinese language program in a Singapore school. As part of data collection in the study, we documented lesson observation and studied the students’ digital story artifacts. We also conducted interviews with students and participating teacher. Four Dualities (areas of tension) under the overarching duality of digital storytelling as a context vs digital storytelling as a pedagogical approach emerged from the design trajectory and the dynamic digital story production process in the current project. By illustrating the four dualities of learning objectives, instructional design, learning assessment, and respective roles of teachers and students, this study aims to enlighten future practitioners of digital storytelling on the full potential of digital storytelling for learner developments and design issues to well consider so as to create a fruitful and constructive learning experience.

Keywords:

Digital storytelling, design dualities, pedagogical design.