Differentiating Instruction with Digital Storytelling While Making Connections to Critical Literacy

Abstract

Incorporating digital storytelling activities into learning experiences for students not only engages students in acquisition of 21st century skills, but also provides teachers with opportunities to differentiate instruction. This paper describes a Digital Storytelling Workshop that matched diverse student learners with teacher candidates in creating digital stories, and the resulting investigation of how participation in the project impacted the ability of student learners to demonstrate critical literacy. Data sources included exit surveys, student interviews, researcher observational field notes, and student products from the workshop. Findings indicated that the digital story-making process engaged students in all levels of higher order thinking skills (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) and at least one component of critical literacy, identified by Wolk (2003), as advocacy, evaluating or solving real-world problems, or making reflective connections between classroom content and culture and/or society.