Digital Story-telling with Flickr

Photo by school Principal Okc
The picture above is an English class in Minibees English Preparatory School in Guangzhou in China. The  children in the photo seems very engaging in the class. I hope when I come back to China to teach English, I can organize such a great class.
As I read in Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling, digital storytelling is a computer based tool to tell stories which basically suitable for all subjects. The main idea of digital storytelling is to combine the art of telling stories with a variety of multimedia, including graphics, audio, video and Web publishing.

“Digital storytelling is an emerging art form of personal, heartfelt expression that enables individual and communities to reclaim their personal cultures while exploring their artistic creativity.” Through using various kinds of multimedia, it is easier for student to create their own story more vividly and has more visual impact on audiences.

When it comes to L2 teaching and learning, digital storytelling is a great choice for both teachers and students. For teachers, we can use this tool to facilitate us to illustrate new concepts or present new materials. It’s also an engaging way to attract students, especially those visual learners. For students, digital storytelling gives them an opportunity to express their own ideas in a more creative way. Sometimes, language learning is not only about learning linguistic system, it also has something to do with cultures. In my future teaching, I want my students to use digital storytelling to create stories about their own cultures and target language cultures. I think they will benefit a lot from it.