Boundary crossing and learning identities – digital storytelling in primary schools

Abstract

This article contributes to academic discussions on how digital storytelling in an educational setting may have potential to build and develop learning identities, agency and digital competences. With a socio-cultural framework on learning and identity as a point of departure, the article sets out to study these issues approached as boundary crossing between the intersecting contexts of leisure time and school. The analysis draws on three examples of digital storytelling among 5th - 7th graders in three Norwegian primary school classes. My findings suggest that digital storytelling might represent a boundary crossing enabling pupils to adopt new roles as producers of creative content, as mentors or guides, to explore new technology and software in a context different from that of outside school and to learn and develop competences related to production processes and multimodal resources. I argue that digital storytelling has a potential to contribute to learning, learning identity and agency, provided it is based on a more fully developed pedagogical strategy of carefully linking school and leisure time.

Surviving the impossible: Studying students' constructions of digital stories on World War II

“…The findings of this thesis to some extent support existing research that report on the benefits of creating learning environments in schools that involves DST (Bjørgen, 2010;Nilsson, 2010;Nixon, 2009;Sadik, 2008;Sylvester & Greenidge, 2009;Vasudevan et al, 2010;Ware & Warschauer, 2005). However, the findings also show that there is not much ground for claiming that DST as a method for working on curricular topics is beneficial and motivating for students in general.…”

“…Traditionally, such stories have been self-presentations, in which the topic of the story is something important from the narrator's own personal life (Lundby, 2008) 1 . In the discourse on the potential of DST in educational settings there exist different arguments for using this method (Bjørgen, 2010;Kearney, 2011;Kulla-Abbott, 2006;Nilsson, 2010;Nixon, 2009;Sadik, 2008;Sylvester & Greenidge, 2009;Vasudevan, Schultz, & Bateman, 2010;Ware & Warschauer, 2005). For instance, it has been argued that DST enables a practice that blends traditional and emerging literacy development (Ohler, 2008), gives students the opportunity to connect the academic part of school culture to their own youth culture (Ware & Warschauer, 2005), and makes students reflect deeply upon the topic of the story (Sadik, 2008).…”

Using Technology to Support Creative Writing: How It Affects Teachers’ Digital Writing Skills and Their Gains from Digital Technology

“…Göçer (2011) reports that presenting different materials to students in writing education will help develop their creativity. Researchers claim that in the interest of the learning experience (Bjørgen, 2010), digital story writing allows students to acquire numerous literacy skills that they must have in the 21st century (Mullen & Wedwick, 2008). In this context, digital story writing is effective in developing writing skills and creativity, as well as in raising original and creative individuals who can keep up with the digital age (Baki, 2019).…”

Information Communication Technology in schools: Students Exercise ‘Digital Agency’ to Engage with Learning

“…While the concept of student agency has been widely discussed and researched, the notion of 'digital agency' is becoming of concern to theorists and practitioners in response to increasingly digitalised social and education systems (Bjørgen, 2010;Lindgren & McDaniel, 2012;Passey, et al, 2018;Schwartz & Okita, 2009,). Passey et al (2018) defines DA as understandings and practices that derive from notions of agency where individuals are empowered to adopt and adapt digital technologies safely and wisely.…”