Today, we have made an activity on Digital Storytelling. Digital Storytelling is basically using multimedia tools to bring narratives to life. Digital Stories can be used to explain a concept, to reflect on a personal experience, to retell a historical event, or to make an argument.
We had several choices on what to do and it was a group activity. Me and my group have decided to make a PSA (Public Service Announcement) about drunk driving. We picked this topic because we had to make this PSA about a problem present in Turkey and especially in Istanbul because of extreme overcrowding, traffic accidents are pretty commonplace. Among these accidents, a good portion of it is caused by drunk driving.
Doing this activity proved more infuriating than expected, especially considering none of us had any experience in video editing or had the means of meeting up in a place because of distance and bad weather conditions. Regardless, when we look at the bright side I got more experience on using the video editing site Kapwing and sound editing program Audacity; the two tools we mainly used in this activity.
Regarding the possible advantages of digital storytelling in the language classroom: I am still confused about what even its "benefits" are. While I have to admit making a PSA in general improves a person's skills of speaking to a huge population and informing them about things, that was only a small side benefit of doing it in my humble opinion. I had a good excersise on using various digital tools, managing a team of individuals and cooperating but that was the overwhelming bulk of it, not any noticeable language skills.
My take on whether to make your students do this or not is simple: It's simply too much work and hassle for what it teaches and how much a skill it improves when you take this class being a language teaching class into account. So I cast my vote against it.
Blogs of my group members:
Burak Sağlam: Know the reason
Özenç Yılmaz: Özenç's ELT journey
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