We Learn in the Form of Stories: How Digital Storytelling Supports Critical Digital Literacy for Pre-Service Teachers

Literature Review

Teacher educators can use digital storytelling to promote critical digital literacies in pre-service teachers. Whenever students create a digital story or share it with an audience, they are using digital literacy skills, developing their critical thinking abilities and cultural comprehension (Peyton & Hague, 2016). By creating a space for all students in a classroom to share their stories, including those that are usually silenced, they can develop an understanding of how and what to communicate to different audiences and unpack the ethics of sharing and listening to personal stories (Pangrazio, 2016). Digital storytelling is a transformational approach that shifts the traditional art of storytelling into the 21^st-century environment of digital technology (Robin, 2008). Digital stories are personal narratives that document a wide-range of culturally and historically embedded lived experiences by combining voice, sound and images into a short video, typically developed by non-professionals with non-professional tools, to be communicated to an audience (Lambert 2010; Reed & Hill 2010). Unlike oral stories that are subject to varying interpretations and emphasis, digital stories become permanent artifacts that capture a specific moment in time, one telling of an experience and stand as objects for personal reflection, critique, and sharing with an audience (Lathem, Reyes, & Qi, 2006).