According to Fleming's VARK model which is one of the most common and widely-used categorizations of various types of learning styles. There are three main types of learners: visual learners, auditory learners, kinesthetic learners or tactile learners.
How to attract learners' attention all the time in the classroom is the first job for a teacher, without learners' attention, there is no input at all. So educators are always searching the way to make their classroom as interesting as possible to catch learners' attention. However there are diversify learners' types, it's difficult to get all of the attention, still there is a good way to attain it--Digital Storytelling. Why I think it would be a good way to catch learners' attention is first learners like to hear the stories, stories are often more appealing than abstract content of the textbook, second Digital Story-telling contains audio clips and visual pictures, it's a stimulation to active learners' schema, especially for visual learners and auditory learners.
In accordance to Center for Digital Story-telling, a digital story is first person video-narrative created by combining recorded voice, still and moving images, and music or other sounds.(Center for Digital Story-telling) How interesting it is! Using videos, pictures tell the storiesit will be absolutely more attractive than reading out the content of the textbook. Be a digital storyteller seems challenge for an internet stranger, however if you are familiar with internet and using computers, I think it will be very beneficial both for educator and learners to use digital story-telling in the classroom.
Actually I used the story-telling in presentation before, but not used for classroom teaching. However presentation has same salients like teaching, both involve demonstration, introducing something new to your audience, and showing visual concepts. So I will use it in pre-teaching, for example the lesson is about the English language history. Learners may not have any idea about this, and for the purpose to make the content a little bit familiar for them, I can show some pictures with audio scripts about some invasion events in British land hundreds years ago, because it relates to the origin of English. And this is digital-telling! It's not that hard. It works well for teaching. And the most important thing is it is easier for learners to acquire than simple words.
Your idea of using digital story-telling to introduce the history of English sounds like a good idea.
ReplyDelete