Digital Story Telling in the ESL classroom
Just listened to a very thought provoking podcast by Wesley Fryer entitled The Case for Digital Storytelling
As a quick aside, I’ve been following Wesley’s blog - Moving at the Speed of Creativity for a few months and I highly suggest you follow it to. Well worth your time.
Now back to the post…
So after listening to this podcast, I leave wondering to myself how digital story telling could fit into the ESL classroom. Wesley really nails home the uselessness of the typical classroom - where the teacher is the sage on the stage, where the teacher moves facts and information from the textbook over to students brains, and students respond by throwing those same facts up on exams at the end of the semester.
Ok, very simplified summary of his talk, but I think I capture his case for story telling as a means of upping student engagement with content - and therefore how well they adopt it into their lives.
The old school - teacher dumps out, students suck in and dump back out on tests. Very little engagement happens, and learning is minimal.
Story telling invites deeper interaction with the “facts.” This interaction and involvement promotes understanding and retention - and in many cases, influences on a far deeper level, the lives of the students involved.
So I was wondering to myself the whole way through the podcast…how would this fit into ESL? Wouldn’t it be cool to invite students to share a story of some sort which works towards helping them become more proficient in English?
What if you’re working with a crew of basic level students and you’re focus is talking about the present tense. What if they told their own personal story of what they do each day?
This is half-backed, and time constrained, but I wanted to throw the idea and question out to all of you…do you see a fit between story telling and the classroom? ESL or otherwise? How so? How are you doing it?
Aaron: This website has some suggestions specific to digital storytelling and multimedia projects in ESL classrooms that might be along the lines of what you’re looking for:
http://www.prel.org/eslstrategies/multimedia.html
wf
Comment by Wesley Fryer — January 17, 2006 @ 3:25 pm
Thanks so much Wesley! I’ll dive into that link as fast as I can, and update what I find. I really appreciate your work!
Comment by Aaron Nelson — January 19, 2006 @ 10:31 pm