MY DIGITAL STORYTELLING EXPERIENCE

This picture is taken from this website.

Thanks to technology, new ways of practising language have developed. My task for this week is also about this; about something new, which is a relatively young way to practise. I studied with my friend, Canan, for this project.

To tell the truth, I had a lot of difficulties while working on my project. Those difficulties were mostly about using the application I chose for the task, not about English. Firstly, me and my friend tried hard to find an application suitable for our purpose and we decided on Animaker. It is a good and relatively easy application to use when compared to other options. Since we were accustomed to voice recording from our podcast task, that part was not that hard for us. Still, to be able to form an animation, there are a lot of details to be considered. For example, we were almost done with our animation but then we decided to add a new sound. After this, we had to arrange all the sounds and pictures from the beginning. Neither of us knew a lot about technology. :) It was also hard for us to write a story. Here, I should thank to my friend Canan. :) We collaborated effectively with each other. It took three days for us to complete the project.

I believe that asking students to form a digital storytelling can be quite challenging for them, especially if they are young learners or kids. The steps of the process should be explained in details. If the steps are not explained, then the students will probably focus on animation, not on English and they will most likely to hate it when it is over. So, the students will probably not benefit from the digital storytelling process. However, when they have clear explanations, the process of forming a digital storytelling can be very funny and enjoyable way of studying English; because they form their own story, they form their own animation. Such things are very important for young learners and kids. When they watch their animation once the process is over, they will probably be proud of themselves and they will want to do the same task again.

To sum up, whether digital storytelling will be beneficial for the students or not heavily depends on teachers. If the teachers really want their students to benefit from it, they have to make some effort and prepare an outline for their students.

Here is the link of our digital storytelling: The New Friendship