Abstract
Digital storytelling blends the ancient art of storytelling with a range of contemporary tools to weave stories together with the author's narrative voice, including digital images, graphics, music and sound. Digital storytelling, as both a teaching method and a learning resource, has been applied in many innovative ways at all levels of education. Digital storytelling supports student learning and allows teachers to adopt innovative and improved teaching methods. Storytelling is a proven and popular pedagogy, while digital storytelling is relatively recent and still seldom used in the setting of early childhood education. Using a case study of a storytelling–art–science club in Jakarta, Indonesia, the researcher explored how and why digital storytelling is used in early childhood education. This club is one of the few organizations that use digital storytelling for teaching and learning programs in early childhood. Data were collected qualitatively using in-depth interviews with four teachers, document analysis, and twice-observations of storytelling activities in each session with 35 and 37 children. The collected data were analyzed using analytical memoing methods. The results indicate that teachers in this club used digital storytelling for several important reasons. They claimed that simple digital technology made storytelling more entertaining, captivating, engaging, communicative and theatrical. This study suggests that the ability of teachers to use digital technology should be enhanced; schools' information and communication technology (ICT) devices should be equipped; some funding should also be allocated by the government to modernize school equipment; while the curriculum should be tailored to meet technological developments, and provide opportunities for children to learn how to make good use of technology.
Highlights
Storytelling is an important teaching resource with a strong presence in all societies since the evolution of human language and has a highly effective role in the education of young children (Phillips, 2000)
The researcher observed what digital media teachers used during storytelling, how they used the media, how children responded to stories, and how digital technology was used
How and why is digital storytelling used in early childhood education? The findings show that teachers use simple digital technology, and that the use of technology has made storytelling more entertaining, exciting, communicative, and theatrical
Summary
Storytelling is an important teaching resource with a strong presence in all societies since the evolution of human language and has a highly effective role in the education of young children (Phillips, 2000). Paley’s writings that addressed the effects of storytelling on social and cognitive development of children (Wright et al, 2008) Both storytelling and story reading have been found to be successful educational strategies that create significant improvements in language acquisition in young children (Lucarevschi, 2016; Miller & Pennycuff, 2008; Speaker et al, 2004); improve their oral or spoken language (Cooper, 2009; Cremin et al, 2018; Isbell et al, 2004; Typadi & Hayon, 2010); develop reading comprehension (Craig et al, 2001; Haven & Ducey, 2007); make sense of basic mathematics (Casey et al, 2008; Goral & Gnadinger, 2006; Pramling & Samuelsson, 2008); explain science (Hu et al, 2020; Preradovic et al, 2016; Valkanova & Watts, 2007; Walan, 2019); prepare for school (Nicolopoulou et al, 2015); communicate effectively (Sundin et al, 2018); help children to learn and appreciate their world (Cremin et al, 2018; Vélez & Prieto, 2018); improve cross-cultural communication (AlJafar & Buzzelli, 2004); and promote moral and social development (Bailey et al, 2006; Burns & Rathbone, 2010; Thambu, 2017). It is a modern pedagogical initiative that has arisen from the proliferation of digital technology (Wang & Zhan, 2010)
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