Abstract
This article explores teaching linguistic anthropology through digital storytelling as a pedagogical foundation. In a course titled Language, Power, and Social Identity offered remotely in the fall of 2020 at Kenyon College in Ohio, storytelling practices provided a way to explore connections between language and identities among a diverse group of twelve students. Using storytelling throughout the semester in multiple ways, activities and assignments culminated in a final class project of a digital storytelling video. Integrating digital storytelling as pedagogy suggests there is potential to generate greater understanding of experiences of identity formation through creative and inclusive learning practices.
Highlights
Digital Storytelling, drawn from storytelling pedagogy and media studies, is a heartfelt video exploration of a broad range of topics told through compelling audio-visual narratives made using accessible digital media software
I outline my use of digital storytelling in an undergraduate special topics course in the fall semester of the 2020-2021 academic year, where my central goal was to have students connect concepts around privilege and structures of oppression to experiences in their own lives or what they have witnessed in their communities through the lens of language imbued with power
The digital storytelling component in this course was a final video project completed in stages, which asked students to develop a digital video story about an aspect of their own identities in response to a course topic relating to language, power, and identity construction
Summary
“Constant experimentation is the essence of successful digital storytelling.” (Joe Lambert, 2017, p.26). I saw that technical linguistic concepts, theoretical material, and academic texts remained disconnected from the personal lives of many students or were reflected on solely at the end of the course in final essay assignments To address this I introduced digital storytelling as part of the seminar course in linguistic anthropology, titled Language, Power, and Social Identities, to integrate scaffolded ways of learning that used narrative exposition unique to digital storytelling to connect weekly themes to student experiences. The digital storytelling component in this course was a final video project completed in stages, which asked students to develop a digital video story about an aspect of their own identities in response to a course topic relating to language, power, and identity construction Students presented their final digital storytelling projects in videos ranging from 3 to 7 minutes for each other at the end of the semester. My goal of incorporating digital storytelling as both a method and genre into the course was to provide a multi-sensory, interdisciplinary, inclusive, creative, and personalized platform for students to process and synthesize course material in relation to their own intimate entanglements with course topics and each other while studying remotely
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