Screen time during students’ downtime has become inevitable. As a first year teacher, I started the year knowing there would be times when my students would have downtime in class, and I wasn’t going to fight them using their devices. After all, I did the same thing when I was in high school and I think I turned out okay. As long as their work was done and they weren’t distracting others, I didn’t have much of a problem with my 10th graders finding a quiet way to entertain themselves. What I didn’t anticipate was the glaringly obvious trend of what students chose to do with their screen time, which was often one of two things: play video games, or watch videos of other people playing video games.
The former makes sense to me. Playing video games is fun, and I’ve been known to dabble in Candy Crush or other little games when I’ve been bored. The latter, however, was sort of baffling to me. My students would sit, enamored with their screen, mouth hanging open slightly, just watching some random person out there play a video game—namely, Fortnite, but other games too. What was it about this that was so ensnaring to them that it captivated them far more than any Ted Talk?
When I asked my students once, they had surprisingly helpful answers. “He’s really funny and makes good jokes about the game,” one student said about the player they usually watch. Another said, “He narrates through the game and tells you the strategies so that you can actually do good in the game, too.” To them, watching these videos was like watching pro sports with an analyst narrating the gameplay, talking through skilled players and techniques that work against various opponents and how to utilize the field to your advantage. Not only that, but the person playing and narrating the game was able to establish some kind of engagement with their viewers because of how they tell the story of the game, using each aspect of game play to weave together a plot that makes sense and teaches a lesson. Perhaps without knowing it, my students were consuming a refined version of digital storytelling.
How could I use this kind of learning in my classroom? In what ways could I allow students to emulate the kind of storytelling they were watching every day in order to synthesize and refine specific communication skills? Luckily, Brett Pierce introduces (and justifies!) a plethora of ways to engage students in various forms of digital storytelling in Expanding Literacy: Bringing Digital Storytelling Into Your Classroom.
Why Is This Important?
Students are going to engage in digital storytelling in one form or another throughout their lives. With the prevalence of social media sites like Instagram and TikTok increasing the number of curated Reels and videos that students are exposed to, students are already trying their hand at creating their own content for their peers and others to interact with online. However, as Pierce points out, the “universal democratization of media creation [has] an emerging dark side,” making it important to “find a way to make meaningful, thoughtful digital storytelling a standard, best practice in schools” (2). The kind of videos that students watch on TikTok or Instagram are a conglomeration of videos made by trained professionals and videos created by everyday amateurs, all being cherry picked by an algorithm that doesn’t necessarily have each person’s best interest in mind. If students are going to be consuming and making digital stories online, then it makes sense to give them the tools and skills to be able to do so in an informed and educated way. I see this justification as empowering students to use digital media in a way that helps them achieve their goals, as well as fostering their skills to critically think about the media they consume and where it came from. I find myself needing to exercise my own media literacy as I scroll on social media, and purposefully select content that I actually want to engage with. For students, this is a skill that they may have some practice doing already, albeit perhaps subconsciously. Pierce points out that “communication technologies universally reprogram our understanding of self and others and communities and societies, and the more we are aware of this phenomenon, the better able we are to harness and optimize those changes” (4). Digital storytelling, whether through Instagram videos or Youtube vlogs, helps us understand people; not only by their content, but how they choose to relay their content. There is a difference between sharing information in a long-form podcast vs. a TikTok video. By exploring how these mediums differ in their purposes, students become more informed as consumers, as well as potential producers of their own digital stories.
How Do I Teach These Skills in the Classroom?
The question this topic raises for an educator like me is, can I actually teach this kind of stuff without having had any training? Pierce argues that all a teacher really needs to know is the content (12). As long as the teacher can recognize and translate the meaning of moves being shown on screen, then the students can trial-by-error learn how to use video editing softwares and other technologies to create their own stories. In our digital age, it is likely that students already know a fair amount about how to edit and publish media in some format, and can teach each other (and you as the teacher) some of the skills they already know. True to its title, Expanding Literacy makes the case that because of the ever-changing nature of technology, figuring out how to use new technological applications independently is another important skill for students and teachers to practice.
Beyond the content, teachers should have some options for activities or assignments that allow students to showcase their understanding. Pierce does not hold back, offering pages of specific activities aligned with goals that follow the storytelling process. Some of the activities are meant for a single class period, and focus on a unique aspect of storytelling. For example, one of the activities highlights the importance of different kinds of silence, because “silence sounds differently in different spaces” (26). The activity involves the students getting up and moving to different areas within the school to record the ambient sound, and then coming together to compare those sounds and see if they can guess where the silence was recorded. This activity is one I never would have thought up on my own, but is highly engaging for students and also makes a point about how detailed storytelling can be; even silence is something that requires thought!
Along with single-class-period lessons, Pierce has out together some detailed outlines for multi-week digital storytelling projects. One of these projects involves creating a game show, with the learning goals being listed as, “Research in primary and secondary sources of a historical figure; storyboarding; script writing; information organization; gaming development; human skills” (108). The outline for the project includes what the process entails, as well as the different phases of the project. While many would assume that digital storytelling is best suited to language arts classrooms, Pierce proves them wrong. The learning targets of the project include many skills that are integral to history, social studies, and beyond.
Another such project included in Expanding Literacy is a persuasive commercial about GMOs. The project includes specific research questions that are then condensed into a script created by the student. With STEAM classrooms in mind, this project is a great multi-week endeavor that includes synthesizing scientific research, taking a stand, and communicating that stance to an audience. Pierce’s multi-disciplinary approach to planning these projects shows that Expanding Literacy truly is expansive, and not just for ELA classrooms.
Especially as a first year teacher, I worry that some of the activities and projects described in Expanding Literacy are too chaotic for my classroom. I already have a hard enough time trying to get my students to stop watching Fortnite videos when I’ve asked them to write a response to a prompt about the book we’re reading. Pierce acknowledges the messiness of this work, saying “I am not here to pitch you on the notion that it won’t be chaotic. That would be a lie. I am here to pitch you on the idea that a classroom that hints at a degree of chaos is a good thing” (122). This concession comforts me greatly, and makes me feel more empowered to try on some of the digital storytelling ideas in this book for my next unit. From smaller single-class period activities like brainstorming or playing with ambient sound, to full on multi-faceted projects like game shows or commercials, Expanding Literacy has a plethora of ideas for teachers across disciplines.
Sounds Fun… Is It Enough?
In theory, digital storytelling sounds fun enough to get students to want to participate. To me, the opportunity to be creative and produce something that I’m interested in sounds enticing enough that I wouldn’t need much more incentive than that. However, I acknowledge that I’m not a reluctant learner and have a pretty solid base of intrinsic motivation. Not all students feel intrinsically motivated, and they might need a little extra something to sweeten the pot. Luckily, Pierce thought of this.
Expanding Literacy promotes competition as a powerful tool to spur students to rise to the challenge under the right circumstances. Sometimes, competition for the sake of competition is enough to get students excited and engaged in an activity. Other times, you might need to include some actual, extrinsic reward. Be careful though: “Competitions don’t work well when the value of the reward at the end outweighs the value of the competitive process itself” (142). Pierce references some of the ways that Meridian Stories, his nonprofit organization, has rewarded students with opportunities to be published on their website. Public recognition can be coupled with feedback from outside sources as well, which Pierce also includes a list of some avenues that teachers and students can go down in order to get feedback from outside the classroom. But Pierce doesn’t stop there: he also includes justifications for how students presenting and taking ownership of their work is beneficial, as well as some firsthand accounts from real teachers sharing the merits of student presentations. The ideas Pierce has listed to motivate students don’t just apply to English classrooms, but can be applied in any classroom, regardless of subject.
From the rationale explaining the importance of digital storytelling to the abundance of practical lessons and activities, Pierce has pieced together a truly useful and thoughtful tool for educators. I would not only recommend Expanding Literacy: Bringing Digital Storytelling Into Your Classroom, but I would argue that this text acts as an important step forward in expanding the way student learning is presented.
Works Cited
Pierce, Brett. Expanding Literacy: Bringing Digital Storytelling Into Your Classroom. Heinemann, 2022.
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MEJ 