EDUCATIONAL USES OF DIGITAL STORYTELLING: RESEARCH RESULTS OF AN ONLINE DIGITAL STORYTELLING CONTEST

Bulent Dogan, Ed.D. University of Houston School of Science and Technology United States bdogan@ssttx.org

Abstract: This paper describes the results of a research study about DISTCO 2009, the second in a series of Digital Storytelling Contests. The DISTCO 2009 was open to all K-12 students and teachers on both national and international levels. The project was designed so students and teachers from different schools may submit original digital stories within a specified time frame and in a certain manner for the contest. The competition was held solely online, and original digital stories were required to be submitted using an official contest website (http://www.distco.org). This article will outline and describe the research results of DISTCO 2009. Specifically, this paper analyzes students perspectives on using digital stories in the classroom, the motivating factors using digital stories, and preferred content areas for digital story use. How teachers incorporated digital storytelling in the classroom, what they hoped to gain by using digital stories in the classroom, what challenges and successes they faced in the implementation process, and whether digital stories helped prepare students for the standardized state assessment test (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills- TAKS in this case) will be discussed as well.

Introduction
Digital storytelling is one of the new and exciting educational technology tools available for use in the classroom. It is a multimedia product consisting of still images or segments of video containing background music or audio and a voice-over narrative (Hull & Nelson, 2005). Fundamentally, digital storytelling is a process of creating a short purposeful movie with various multimedia components in order to create an engaging presentation. An original script, often in the authors own voice, combined with these components is essential part of this process. Topics for digital stories can vary from personal reflections to instructional subjects. The benefits of creating digital stories are noted for utilizing virtually all of the skills students in K-12 are expected to have in the 21st century (Jakes, 2006). Information literacy, visual literacy, creativity and risk taking can all be achieved when students actively participate in the creative process of digital storytelling (Jakes & Brennan, 2005; Robin, 2008). Moreover, student motivation and engagement levels have been reported to have increased (Paull, 2002; Banaszewski, 2005; Salpeter, 2005). The potential uses of digital storytelling by teachers or students are numerous as it has a broad range of possible applications (Dogan & Robin, 2008). These applications range from teaching content to students to empowering students by making them active researchers and independent thinkers. In addition, teaching writing, building communities through storytelling and meeting International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Technology standards are among the educational uses for digital storytelling (Banaszewski, 2002; Salpeter, 2005; Weiss, Benmayor, O' Leary & Eynon, 2002; Dogan & Robin, 2008).

The Study
There are few research studies that demonstrate not only how digital storytelling is being used in the classroom, the effect on student learning, but also difficulties teachers may experience in the implementation process. Because of this lack of current research on the effective use of digital storytelling in K-12 education, the researcher completed a study on the implementation of digital storytelling in the classroom by a group of K-12 teachers (Dogan & Robin, 2008). To further explore and augment current research on the educational use of digital storytelling, a new project was developed. This project involved hosting a series of Digital Storytelling Contests (DISTCO 2008 and DISTCO 2009) in collaboration with Riverwalk Educational Foundation, Cosmos Foundation

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and University of Houston in Texas. The DISTCO 2009 was open to all K-12 students and teachers on both national and international levels. The DISTCO had two major goals: 1) to encourage students and teachers to challenge themselves in an exciting competition where 21st century skills can be enhanced, and 2) to further current research on the effectiveness of digital storytelling in K-12 education. The project was designed so that students and teachers from different schools may submit original digital stories within a specified time frame and certain manner for the contest. The competition was held solely online, and original digital stories were required to be submitted using an official contest website (http://www.distco.org). The first contest of the DISTCO series, DISTCO 2008, was initiated in the fall of 2008, and digital story submissions were accepted through January 2009. The digital story submission period was approximately three weeks as DISTCO 2008 was designed as a pilot project to the DISTCO 2009. Given the limited publication of the project and time frame for submission, only 36 teachers and 174 students participated in DISTCO 2008. During this time frame, contest participants were asked to fill out an online survey and a consent form in order to participate in this research study. The data collected from the surveys was used for research purposes and were presented in a conference paper in March 2009 (Dogan & Robin, 2009). The experience gained from the DISTCO 2008 was fairly successful and a second contest, DISTCO2009, was initiated to continue potentially more successful research on the educational uses of digital storytelling. Similar to DISTCO 2008, DISTCO 2009 had the same rules and standards such as online digital story submission procedure exclusively through one particular website and online surveys for research purposes. Based on the knowledge gained from DISTCO 2008, DISTCO 2009 promised to deliver much more exciting, accurate and complete research data. A significant increase in student participation had already proven this project to have tremendous potential. For instance, the student participation in DISTCO 2009 (n= 808) was significantly higher than the previous contest, DISTCO 2008 (n=174). As ascertained by a previous study a more effective and longer advertising period before the contest was implemented. In addition, allowing participants to submit projects in a recommended time frame of approximately six weeks helped to achieve a better participation rate (Dogan, 2009). However, lower than the previous contest (n=36), the teacher participation rate was limited to 18 in this study. This article will outline and describe the research results of DISTCO 2009. Specifically, this paper analyzes students perspectives on using digital stories in the classroom, the motivating factors using digital stories, and preferred content areas for digital story use. How teachers incorporated digital storytelling in the classroom, what they hoped to gain by using digital stories in the classroom, what challenges and successes they faced in the implementation process, and whether digital stories helped prepare students for the standardized state assessment test (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills- TAKS in this case) will be discussed as well.

Results Students
When students asked if they had prior experience with using digital stories, only 19% stated they had created a digital story before the contest. Remaining students (n=656, 81%) indicated that they had never created digital stories before. While 53% of the students found creating digital stories in the Normal range of ease, 12% of the students found it Easy, and 17% of students found it Very Easy. While 15% of students found them hard, only 3% of the students found creating digital stories very hard. A survey question asking if the students think that learning a subject through creating digital stories is fun resulted in an overwhelming 80% Yes, whereas the rest responded No. Thirty four percent of the students said that they learned a great deal about the subject for which they created a digital story while 41% indicated that they only learned some and 15% stated that they learned a little bit. If these three categories are combined, 90 % of the students reported to have learned about a subject independently through digital storytelling. Students chose a variety of answers for the following question: In what subject would you like to see your teachers allowing you to create digital storytelling projects? English Language Arts (ELA) (17%) was the most selected subject by students followed by Music (13%), Art (12%), Social Studies (12%) and Computers (11%). Science and Physical Education were the next popular choices at 6% while Math (3%) and Languages (2%) were the least popular.

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A similar trend followed in the responses to the question In what subject would you like to see your teachers using digital storytelling in the classroom? According to students, ELA was, again, the most popular subject choice with 21%, followed by Social Studies (14%), Music (11%), Art (11%) and Computers (9%). This time, however, Math was a more popular choice than the previous question at 7%. On the other hand, while Science was slightly more popular than the previous question with 7%, Physical Education remained the same (6%) and the percentage of Languages was tripled to 6%. When students were questioned the strongest motivating factor for them to create digital stories, two of the answer items, Having the chance to use computers when creating digital stories, and I liked using multimedia components such as images and music, were the most popular choices at 26%. This response was followed by I had a chance to express myself with digital stories (20%), I felt like directing my own movie (15%), and with Other being the last choice at 13%. Regarding the use of digital storytelling in the classroom in the future, 74% percent of the students wished their teachers use more digital storytelling, and 73% desired their teachers to allow them to create their own digital stories. According to survey results, 75% of the students learned about digital storytelling through their teachers; while 15% indicated that they learned the process on their own, another 7% indicated that they were taught by another student. Only 3% learned how to use digital storytelling through a software program or internet. Even though the results of the following open-ended question What did you like the most about digital storytelling? revealed various responses from the students, some trends did emerge. The main trend of themes among the responses were getting excited and being able to participate in a contest, opportunity of selfexpression and being creative being able to make ones own movie, and learning more about the topic researched, respectively.

Teachers
When teachers asked if they had prior experience with using digital stories, only 33% of them revealed that they had created a digital story before the contest. The remaining teachers (n=12, 67%) indicated they had never created digital stories before. A survey item asking teachers how they would most likely to use digital storytelling in the classroom, more than half of participating teachers (55%) indicated they would have their students create digital stories. Twenty eight percent of teachers said that they would create their own stories to teach content in the classroom and another 17% said that they would prefer to use stories created by others. Teachers were asked the survey question, How easy did you find creating digital stories? According to teacher responses, the difficulty level of creating digital stories was in the range of very easy to normal. Forty four percent of the teachers found creating digital stories Normal, 28% found them Very Easy, and 22% found them Easy. Only one teacher indicated that he/she found creating digital stories hard. Teachers were also surveyed about the use of digital storytelling to improve students skills such as in media literacy, organization, writing, and presentation skills. Media Literacy was the highest ranked skill category, selected by 33% of the teachers, followed by Organizational Skills (22%), Writing Skills (16%), Technical Skills (11%), and Presentation Skills (11%). Research Skills was the least selected item with only 6% of the teachers selecting this category. Teachers were asked about the barriers that kept them from using digital storytelling in the classroom. Technical Assistance was the highest ranked choice at 28% followed by Time Issues (22%), and Access to Hardware (22%). Additional responses included I faced no barriers (6%), Access to Software (6%) and Other (11%). One of the research questions posed by this project was differing motivational factors of digital storytelling for students. Teachers thought that the Directors chair effect (rather being the director of ones own movie) (Banaszewski, 2005) and Allowing students to be creative were the key motivating factors for students with both being at 39%. Allowing students to be self-expressive was the second most selected response (17%) followed by Getting to use a variety of media (5%). When teachers were asked to evaluate the best feature of digital storytelling as an educational tool, Digital storytelling can be shared with others and Digital storytelling motivates user to learn about the subject were the most selected responses at 33%. Digital stories can be created with readily available tools was the second most selected response (22%) by the teachers followed by Digital storytelling is easy to use/create (6%) and Digital storytelling is easy to teach (6%).

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The question of How supportive was your school administration when you used digital storytelling in the classroom? revealed administrators were largely supportive of teachers efforts of implementing this educational tool in the classroom. Fifty six percent of the teachers surveyed stated their administration was Supportive, 11% stated Very supportive, and 28% stated they were a Little supportive, whereas 5% stated they were Not supportive. Participating teachers were also surveyed the likelihood of including digital storytelling in their teaching after the contest. Twenty two percent of the teachers indicated that they were Very likely to incorporate digital stories into their teaching, 45% indicated they were Likely, while 33% indicated they were Somewhat likely to utilize this tool. Regarding a question addressing the issue of teacher and student use of digital storytelling for standardized test preparation, 61% of the teachers surveyed answered Yes. In addition, the response to an open-ended question in order to elicit more information on this issue was largely positive. Among the possible uses of digital storytelling suggested by teachers included: learning a specific content material through digital stories, motivating students to express a specific idea in a creative way, helping students to visualize questions for better understanding of those questions, and having students preparing a short presentation on specific objectives to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding.

Conclusions Students
According to survey results, most students in this research study did not have prior experience with digital storytelling. Although creating digital stories appeared like an easy task for most students, in actuality the teachers role was crucial in helping the vast majority of students master the process of digital storytelling. These findings were similar to those in the previous study during DISTCO 2008 (Dogan & Robin, 2009). Therefore, the success of the students depends on adequate training is provided ideally by teachers. In light of these results, most students should be easily able to master digital storytelling under proper instruction. According to this research study, perhaps to the majority of the educators, one of the most remarkable discovery was the students reported enjoying learning through digital stories and also in creating them. Because of this fun factor, 90% of the participating student reported they learned a great deal. Thus, digital storytelling may be useful encouraging students to be self-learners, which is the goal of every educator. Digital storytelling was reported to increase student motivation and engagement (Dogan & Robin, 2008; Salpeter, 2005). As the results of the study indicated the reasons for student feeling motivated to use this educational tool in the classroom varied. The main motivating factors for students were being allowed the opportunity to use computers and multimedia components such as images and music. Other factors included allowing students to be creative and experiencing the directors chair effect (Banaszewski, 2005). The main themes that emerged from the responses of students for the question of What did you like the most about digital storytelling? were getting excited and being able to participate in a contest, opportunity of self-expression and being creative being able to make ones own movie, and learning more about the topic researched, respectively. According to these results, digital storytelling is a dynamic, engaging, and fun way of learning about various skills and subjects. These results showed digital storytelling is a very promising, valuable, educational tool to be used within in the classroom. Certain results were worth further investigating regarding the subject choice for digital storytelling as reported by students. For instance, ELA was the most popular subject not only in creating digital stories but also being used by their teachers in the classroom. However, another traditional digital storytelling subject, Social Studies, was ranked fourth in creating a digital story based on this subject by students; then, they ranked the same subject second as far as their teachers using this tool for educational purposes. Additionally, a notable difference found between DISTCO 2008 and DISTCO 2009 study was in the ranking of Music and Art (Dogan & Robin, 2009). During DISTCO 2008, Music and Art were ranked first both in terms of students creating digital stories and also being taught in these subjects. On the other hand, in DISTCO 2009, they were ranked lower behind the ELA. A further study is needed to understand this change in preference. In addition, another interesting result was why Math and Science, subjects commonly placed together, were ranked so low by the students. Moreover, why was Science twice preferred over Mathematics in regards to students creating digital storytelling? These are all intriguing questions which need to be addressed.

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The results implied that a great majority of the students would like their teachers to allow them to use more digital storytelling in the classroom. Moreover, a slightly larger number of students desired their teachers to use digital storytelling as teaching tool.

Teachers
During this study, similar to students, teachers also had limited knowledge of the usage and creation of digital stories before the contest. Their limited experience was not an obstacle because the vast majority of teachers found creating digital stories easy and only one teacher participant thought creating digital stories was hard. Finding the creation of digital stories simple was one of the most highly appreciated features for teachers (Dogan & Robin, 2008; Dogan & Robin, 2009). Teacher survey results indicated more than half of participating teachers preferred letting students create their own digital stories rather than creating digital stories themselves to teach content. This result was contradictory to a previous study in which digital stories were used as much by students as by the teachers (Dogan & Robin, 2008). This may be due to varying teacher population and educational environments. When students actively participate in the creation process of digital storytelling, they develop certain 21st century skills (Howell & Howell, 2003; Jakes, 2006; Robin, 2008). For instance, Media Literacy was the highest ranked skill. Organizational skills and Writing skill followed closely behind. These results were expected. In fact, digital storytelling is known for being used to teaching writing in K-12 (Banaszewski, 2002; Salpeter, 2005; Weiss, Benmayor, O' Leary & Eynon, 2002). Therefore, overall, the teachers who participated in this study agreed specific skills can be improved by using digital storytelling. Teachers were asked about the obstacles in using digital storytelling in the classroom. Technical assistance was the highest ranked barrier that would keep teachers from using digital storytelling in this study. This result was unexpected because Time issues is the most commonly cited problem area when incorporating technology in the classroom (Dexter, Anderson & Ronnkvist, 2002; Ringstaff & Kelly, 2002; White, Ringstaff & Kelly, 2002) especially with digital storytelling (Dogan & Robin, 2008; Dogan &Robin, 2009). Like students, teachers believed creating digital stories increased learning motivation and engagement levels. Specifically, the findings of this study supported the Directors chair effect, Allowing students to be creative, and Opportunity for self expression as key factors in terms of motivational factors (Banaszewski, 2005; Paull, 2002; Dogan & Robin, 2008). Most teachers reported that the best feature of digital storytelling was sharing digital stories and in return this made users want to learn more about the subject being taught. In addition, being able to create digital stories with readily available tools including the ease in which teachers can teach digital stories were found to be remarkable features. According to the results of this study, teachers found their administrators largely supportive of their efforts in implementing this educational tool in the classroom. Support of administrators is often cited as key for the successful implementation of educational technology tools (Sandholtz, 2001). Overall, teachers were very positive about this new technology. The majority of teachers indicated they were likely to include digital storytelling in their teaching after the contest was finished. One important question explored in this study was whether digital storytelling can be used as an effective teaching tool for standardized tests such as TAKS. Most teachers reported digital storytelling could be used for preparing students for these types of tests. Teachers listed the following suggestions on how to use digital storytelling in the classroom for this purpose: use as a tool for reviewing content material, present vocabulary for any subject, and prepare timelines. Teachers also thought that digital storytelling could help them with illustrating test taking strategies, exploring test anxiety, and demonstrating ways of solving these problems. In conclusion, DISTCO 2009 was a more successful project than the previous one, especially in securing more students participants. Overall, the research results were very valuable in paving a way for further research. The results of DISTCO 2009 will be investigated in further detail through additional interviews with teachers and students about their experiences. The more data gained, the greater our knowledge becomes about this educational tool which appears to have tremendous potential.

References
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Banaszewski, M. T. (2005). Digital storytelling: Supporting digital literacy in grades 4 12. Masters thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology. Retrieved February 10, 2010 from http://techszewski.blogs.com/techszewski/files/TBanaszewski_DS_thesis.pdf Dexter, S., Anderson, R. E. & Ronnkvist, A. (2002). Quality technology support: What is it? Who has it? and What difference does it make? Journal of Educational Computing Research, 26 (3), 287-307. Retrieved February 10, 2010 from http://sdexter.net/Vitae/Qual_final_with-ForGates.pdf Digital Storytelling Contest (DISTCO), Official Website, http://www.distco.org Dogan, B. & Robin, B. (2008). Implementation of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom by Teachers Trained in a Digital Storytelling Workshop. In C. Crawford et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2008 (pp. 902-907). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved February 10, 2010 from http://www.editlib.org/p/27287 and http://www.distco.org/site2008-DOGAN-ROBIN.pdf Dogan, B. & Robin, B. (2009). Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling: Creating Digital Storytelling Contests for K-12 Students and Teachers. In I. Gibson et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2009 (pp. 633-638). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved February 10, 2010 from http://www.editlib.org/p/30673 and http://www.distco.org/site2009_dogan_robin.pdf Dogan, B. (2009). Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling: The Challenges of Designing an Online Digital Storytelling Contest for K-12 Students and Teachers. In Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2009 (pp. 3879-3884). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved February 10, 2010 from http://www.editlib.org/p/32037 and http://www.distco.org/ED-MEDIA_Dogan_2009.pdf Howell & Howell (2003) What is your digital story? Library Media Connection, Oct2003, Vol. 22 Issue 2, p40, 2p. Jakes, D.S., & Brennan, J. (2005). Capturing stories, capturing lives: An Introduction to digital storytelling. Retrieved February 10, 2010 from http://bookstoread.com/etp/earle.pdf Hull, G. A., & Nelson, M. E. (2005). Locating the semiotic power of multimodality written communication. Research in the Teaching of English, 22(2), pp. 224-261. Jakes, D.S., & Brennan, J. (2005). Capturing stories, capturing lives: An Introduction to digital storytelling. Retrieved February 10, 2010 from http://bookstoread.com/etp/earle.pdf Jakes, D., (2006). Standards-proof your digital storytelling efforts. TechLearning, March 2006. Retrieved February 10, 2010 from http://www.techlearning.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=180204072 Paull, C. N. (2002). Self-perceptions and social connections: Empowerment through digital storytelling in Adult Education. Dissertation Abstracts International. (UMI No. 3063630) Ringstaff, C., & Kelley, L. (2002). The Learning Return on Our Educational Technology Investment. San Francisco: West Ed RTEC. Retrieved February 10, 2010from http://www.wested.org/online_pubs/learning_return.pdf Robin, B. (2008). The effective uses of digital storytelling as a teaching and learning tool. Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy through the Communicative and Visual Arts, Vol. 2, (pp. 429-440). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New York, NY. Salpeter, J. (2005). Telling tales with technology, Technology & Learning 25 no7 18, 20, 22, 24 F 2005 Sandholtz, J. H. (2001). Learning to teach with technology: A comparison of teacher development programs. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 9(3), 349374. Weiss, T. Benmayor, R. O' Leary, C. & Eynon, B. (2002). Digital Technologies and Pedagogies, Social Justice 29 no4 153-67. White, N., Ringstaff, C., & Kelley, L. (2002). Getting the most from technology in schools. San Francisco: WestEd.

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