Action Research Design: What happens when students use digital storytelling to tell the stories of themselves and others?

Zoë Randall, Multimedia Teacher, High Tech Middle Media Arts

“Nothing is impossible if you just believe,” is a phrase that we

often hear, but hardly ever take to heart. Your story gave me the

chance to truly understand this phrase and have it remain in my

mind during difficult times.- Mary Ann, 8th grader, HTMMA.

“Thanks to you and the young ladies for providing me with such a

wonderful experience. It's gestures like those that make everything I've endured worth every

second”- Sherman, President of the Paralyzed Veterans Association, Marine Corps.

The power of digital storytelling is not a new concept. They began in the early ‘90s and

immediately began to be picked up at schools, libraries, and individual classrooms as the

nouveau storytelling approach for the 21st century. This new media approach to storytelling has

shifted baselines in the way we share personal memoirs and open up to one another in this

human fabric we are creating each day on the Internet.

I found out about this powerful storytelling approach in the Spring of 2009 when I contacted

Warren Hegg, President and Founder of the Digital Clubhouse Network in San Jose, CA, and

President of the Stories of Service organization. A colleague had suggested that I do a Stories of

Service project. After viewing what seemed to me a way to engage students in media that

matters, I proceeded by inquiring if the project was still active. I never could have predicted the

following response, nor the two months which followed the beginning of an incredible journey.

Following the return email, my students and I launched into the Stories of Service project and

began chronicling the lives of local veterans and making movies about their service to our

country. After producing 13 stories, we screened them at the Veterans Museum in San Diego and

then in one month, 8 students and I raised the funds to attend the National Stories of Service

conference and Memorial Day Parade in Washington, D.C. It was a whirlwind journey, but since

then I’ve been reflecting about the impact of such an experience, and the words and actions of

my students.

My students, who were in 8th grade when we embarked on this journey, and are now 9th graders,

still have a voice with Stories of Service. They have since started their own student-led

organization that seeks to continue the spirit of the stories and have joined the program’s new

initiative, Spirit of ’45, to document the stories of the WWII generation. They have impressed

me beyond words, and I wonder, how can I make the experience happen again for a new

generation of students?

My research seeks to continue this spirit of storytelling that brought me and my students closer to

one another, as well as closer to our community in a way we never imagined. We all gained a

better appreciation of the sacrifices of the men and women who fought to protect our freedoms.

Through digital storytelling, the veterans of San Diego came to life, and brought a perspective to

war, suffering, triumph over odds, and sacrifice that awakened inquisitiveness and empathy in

my students. To speak to a veteran was an opportunity to hear of the war through their eyes,

when so much of what they know now about the war is sensationalized in the news or in the

video games they play. This experience led me to wonder, how can we bring the voices from our

past and present, together in the classroom and forge new relationships between the generations?

How can we use digital storytelling to pass on the lessons of one generation to the next? The

stories preserve the memories of our past, but can also serve to heal wounds unresolved in the

present.

In conducting my research, my hope for my students is to explore the world of digital

storytelling through telling the stories of themselves, and the stories of others. I hope that the

former will open up pathways for them to communicate their identity, while the latter will help

bridge the gap of communication between people and instill the spirit of storytelling in a digital

age. Throughout the Stories of Service project, I saw a reciprocal bond formed between

storyteller and digital storyteller. The effect on students and the sense of pride they feel in

honoring someone else by producing their story is far-reaching. I hope that through learning

about themselves, they’ll find stronger connections and empathic ties to others.

These goals lead me to a research question that I am excited to explore further: What happens

when students use digital storytelling to tell the stories of themselves and others? I plan to

execute this research in a multiphase digital storytelling project. I am hoping to find that they

will be more thoughtful about their own life choices and more sensitive to people in all walks of

life through the project. I am going to explore their stories and what develops through the digital

storytelling process by examining how identity, empathy and community play a role.

Part I: Student Digital Storytelling Project

I-Connect: Digital Stories of Youth and their Communities

Understanding themselves is the root of understanding others. If students have the freedom to

express their views, their lives, their vision and dreams and hopes, the hope is that students will

feel more connected to others. By telling stories from their own lives first, students will learn

about expressing themselves. Through writing exercises guided towards developing their own

story and going through the process of making their digital stories, students will discover things

they never knew about themselves and others. Once their story of themselves is complete,

students will then apply their knowledge towards producing a digital story for another person.

The person they choose can be someone close to them, someone they want to get to know better,

or someone in the community who has made an impression. The idea of community will be

further defined by the class, but could include someone in their classroom community, home

community, or the greater community. The final movies will be presented in class, and those

students who wish to exhibit beyond the classroom will have an opportunity to share their films

on their digital portfolios and have a public screening.

Part II: Documentary Film Thesis

Walks of Life: Students on the Path to Discovering Themselves and Others Through Digital

Storytelling

Walks of Life, a documentary thesis film, will share the findings of what happens when students

explore the world of digital storytelling. The adage to walk in someone else’s shoes, is a study of

human empathy and discovering ourselves through the lives of others. We can’t truly be a

compassionate society unless we take the risks to know each other better and find common

understandings. Walks of Life shows us that humankind rests upon the stories we share from

generation to generation, between person to person. The power of digital storytelling in one

small San Diego charter middle school, will seek to reveal how students broaden their views of

life through the camera and the written word and expand their views to the greater public.

Understandings

Their story, yours and mine -- it’s what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and we owe it to

each other to respect our stories and learn from them. —William Carlos Williams

We all have a story inside us. Our memories are stories that we need to share with others.

(Schank,1990). Storytelling is one of the oldest forms of human communication and has shaped

culture today. The way we experience life constitutes stories we can tell others. Our desire to

tell and hear stories is innately human. As far as we know, humans are the only creatures capable

of telling stories.

Stories shape who we are to the world, as we construct our own personal mythology (Schank,

1990, 44). There are also many ways to tell stories, many kinds of different stories, and many

audiences for stories. In today’s world of new media, storytelling has expanded from a local

experience to a global one. The interactivity of storytelling has also shifted from real-time to

anytime. The limits of storytelling are seemingly endless and now allow for more possibilities of

connections across the world wide web.

I will be focusing this study on digital storytelling and it’s implications in a middle-school

classroom on identity, empathy, and community.

What is Digital Storytelling?

Digital Storytelling (DS) has been evolving as many have experimented with this new media

approach to traditional storytelling. Many authors have their own definitions of what it is, but

most contemporary literature points to the founder of the Center for Digital Storytelling, Joe

Lambert, who along with Dana Achtley, a performer who inspired his work, defined it as a short,

first-person video-narrative created by combining recorded voice, still and moving images, and

music or other sounds.(Lambert,www.storycenter.com) .

DS has many applications in the classroom, library, business and community space for a variety

of fields and disciplines (Lambert, 2006). What makes DS different than any other storytelling

method is that it can put the personal experiences of a storyteller in front of a global audience,

connecting that one individual with innumerable others. It also blends voice with images that

help to construct a more holistic audio/visual experience for the viewer. The construction of a

digital story requires the knowledge or aid in media practices, using video, photos, and voiceover

to make personal stories come to life. For this reason, many media specialists offer courses or

workshops which seek to train students of digital storytelling to use the applications and learn the

visual language of filmmaking. Although it can be a complex process, anyone can learn with the

guidance and expertise of someone who is trained to teach multimedia skills such as scanning,

editing, and recording voiceovers. The additional support of a story coach or mentor helps the

digital storyteller craft the kind of story that can be told visually and within a given set of time.

Why make digital stories?

Research shows that there are several applications for digital storytelling in education.

Storytelling projects, such as Stories ofS, connects kids to their communities through

intergenerational-storytelling (Hegg, 2008). Other research points to the importance of

intergenerational storytelling from grandparent to grandchild, where themes of history, family,

and advice emerge and are passed on (Pratt and Friese, 2006). It is noted that the power of these

stories can be far-reaching, as the stories are passed on, they can transform our perceptions of the

storytellers identity. As I witnessed a former student who produced a digital story about a WWII

veteran, she stated “at first he was just my neighbor, but now he’s a hero from WWII.” Before

the storytelling process began, these people didn’t really know one another; but after the digital

story was produced, the storyteller became the immortalized and the digital story producer, the

immortalizer. Although the storyteller never admitted to being a hero, his digital story

transformed his identity in the eyes of his producer.

The digital storytelling experience is well documented in a variety of DS projects and have

several implications in the works of various researchers. In the Place Project, student voice and

increased motivation were a result of students getting the opportunity to tell stories about a place

that was significant to them (Banaszewski, 2005). Realizing that there is always a special place

in the hearts of children, Banasweski simply prompted students to describe that place in a story

and make it digital through the narration and visuals. Cohn states in the article, Clips from the

Heart, that digital storytelling empowered communication between teachers and students(1998).

By allowing students a chance to voice their stories, they were able to form bonds that increased

motivation and engagement. In the World of Digital Storytelling, Ohler states that it helps in

engaging students in the media making process as producers and not just consumers of digital

media through digital storytelling. To me, this is a very important step in the process. When I

wrote a grant to gain digital cameras for my classroom, I titled it, “Beyond YouTube: Kids

Creating Content”. I realized how the Net-Generation could seem ever in danger of being

mindless consumers of technology and media. By giving students opportunities to see

themselves as producers of meaningful content, such as in the case of personal digital stories,

they can step beyond the sea of media watchers and rise above as media makers.

Making digital stories also helps to build 21st century skills which research shows is necessary

for the 21st student to gain 21st century employment (Czarnecki, 2009). The first level of the

digital storytelling process is the writing, and some students often struggle to see themselves as

good writers. It is important to understand how motivation can improve when students get the

chance to write for digital stories, using the medium that they’ve grown up watching on

television or the big screen. Through the draft process of writing a script, research shows

students able to employ multiple literacies through digital storytelling and helps struggling

writers (Sylvester, 2004 ).

Although I venture into the world of digital storytelling with 6th graders and I haven’t concluded

what I will find out, I do go in realizing the benefits and learning experiences they will be able to

take away as I have seen evidenced in the previous research found on similar projects. In my

own study, I will be focusing on the impact digital storytelling can have on building a sense of

community, developing empathy, and exploring our own and other’s identities. These matter to

me most because as a middle school teacher, I often witness the pangs of growing up, as students

are finding their identity, learning where to fit in the crowd or stand out from it, and struggling to

understand who they are. I hope that through an in depth exploration of identity, empathy, and

community through digital storytelling that students will find the links that connect them all, and

learn to value each other for their individuality.

Building Community Through Storytelling

Stories are told to be shared. There are different views of audience and purpose, ranging from

stories for oneself, stories for others, and stories as conversation (Schank, 1990). A story for

oneself is a story that has to be told for the benefit of the storyteller. A story for others is one in

which we are compelled to create for the mutual enjoyment of others. A story as conversation is

one that builds from the interactions that audience and storyteller have with one another. There

have been several digital storytelling projects aimed at the idea of increasing the community

connections with personal stories from the past.

For example, Stories of Service “invites young people from across America to join our national

campaign to capture the stories of the World War II generation.”(http://www.digiclub.org/sofs/)

Warren Hegg, founder of the Digital Clubhouse Network and Stories of Service organization, is

passionate about this work for it increases the connections between generations, so that stories

told will be passed on to the next generation.

Several organizations, such as Stories of Service, NOAA, the U.S. Navy Memorial, BBC, and

others are finding ways of expressing and passing on the traditions of oral history using today’s

technology and the possibilities of a limitless audience through offering the community

opportunities to gather stories. The Center for Digital Storytelling has several case studies that

show the vast spread of digital storytelling from projects in the United States to collaborations

with 33 countries. Some of the programs they have created or assisted have included training

other centers to build digital storytelling programs that teach middle school students to express

their communities, as well as story gathering programs at local museums that invite the

community to share their stories.

The implications of this are still being researched, but the collective voice of different groups

being able to express their experiences individually lends to a new cultural fabric that weaves

together a new understanding. Instead of official stories, stories that come from official sources

being the only source of truth, these personal stories multiplied together make a community of

storytellers who are able to shape their own truth and through the process of digital storytelling,

make it official (Schank, 1990). In my own digital storytelling project, my aim is to build a

sense of community from school, to home and the greater San Diego region. I define community

as a group of people sharing the same space and working together to help it function as a unit.

Like penguins in a penguin colony live together in their huddle and share the land, food, and

water for the preservation of their species, students will become part of their school community,

sharing resources, learning together and helping one another succeed at school and in life. As

students produce digital stories of and for their community, they in turn will create a community

of storytelling producers who are skilled and trained to take DS anywhere.

Story as a bridge to Empathy

One of my goals is to find out what happens when students tell stories and share them with

others. I am curious to find out if students feel more connected to one another by the act of

sharing the experience of storytelling? Will students understand each other better through the

process of understanding themselves through storytelling? Will they be more empathetic?

Empathy is one of those factors that I predict will be hard to gauge. D. M. Berger wrote that

empathy is: “The capacity to know emotionally what another is experiencing from within the

frame of reference of that other person, the capacity to sample the feelings of another or to put

oneself in another’s shoes”(1987). R. R. Greenson states: “To empathize means to share, to

experience the feelings of another person.” (1960, p. 418). To me, these definitions of empathy

help me understand it as, the ability to connect with another person through the understanding of

their life perspective. I plan to examine evidence of this in the classroom by asking students

what their perceptions of others are before the digital storytelling project, and compare their

answers to what they say after the project. Through conversations students have with one

another and the interactions I observe between them, I hope to find measurable changes in

empathy over time.

Humans form empathy through their experiences and connecting to the experiences of others.

Thus, story can have the power to create empathetic connections to one another through the

sharing of one’s own experiences. Interestingly, there’s another side of this to consider, as I

reviewed P.J. Manney’s article,“Empathy in the Time of Technology: How Storytelling is the

Key to Empathy”. he states:

“There is a belief among some academics and storytellers that the non-visual story has a

deeper psychological impact than the visual story, since the non-visual relies on each

mind using its personal experience to build its imagination, making it a more intimate,

relatable ‘vision’ with a greater impact on one’s empathy”(2008).

In an age where visuals bombard the senses everywhere and anytime, it is interesting to ponder

the effects of storytelling in visual and non-visual forms. The power of film is the suspension of

disbelief, and in the case of traditional literature, the mind’s imagination can have a way of

bringing characters and situations to life much more vividly than in the movie rendition. I

believe this effect though is personal. The story has personal meaning to the reader when read,

and when visualized in film, can have an opposite or unintended result than what was imagined.

I believe in the case of self-produced digital stories about one’s personal story, the visual can

have an overwhelming effect on empathy. By seeing other’s personal stories come to life with

all of the senses brought to the screen, I predict students will have a greater sense of empathy. I

will measure this perhaps by comparing the empathic response from the written story to the

digital story. However, I can see the argument the Manney brings up regarding the disconnect

between the non-visual story and the visual story, and I think it’ll be interesting to observe from

non-visual to visual storytelling, differences in the different stages of the process.

I’m interested in seeing how empathetic connections occur in the classroom. Is it natural for a

6th grade student to empathize with another while biologically they are developing the

adolescent ego? What happens when students can’t empathize? How does digital storytelling

perhaps open the door for the possibility of empathic connections?

Narrative and the Self in Digital Storytelling

How does one construct their identity using digital storytelling? Can it be an effective tool for

students to really dig deep into the heart of figuring out who they are? Or is it prone to becoming

an avenue for invented stories (Schank, 1990)? Schank states: “Story invention, for children or

adults, is the process of the massaging of reality”(35). It doesn’t necessarily mean that the events

in the story didn’t happen, but rather it is up to the storyteller to share how the events are told.

Invented stories don’t come out of thin air, and I suppose part of the identity formation will be a

process of what one is comfortable sharing and how it will be expressed.

Using the Emerging Life Story Interview(ELSI) method (Reese, 2009) and the approaches of

Storycorps, “an independent nonprofit whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds

and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives”(http://

storycorps.org/about/), students will be able to construct a sense of life story and identity.

Yet, this idea of reconstructing or deconstructing harmful identity is intriguing as well. Jean

Houston said, “If you keep telling the same sad small story, you will keep living the same sad

small life.”  I wonder, how will students who may have had trauma in their lives be able to

reconstruct a different story of themselves to live by?

School Setting Description

At High Tech Middle Media Arts, a San Diego charter middle school serving students in

grades 6 through 8, I have the great privilege of being the multimedia teacher, offering a

curriculum in communications, media literacy, graphic arts, video production, and

photography to our 300+ student population. Not many schools in the San Diego Unified

School District offer a course in multimedia to their middle school students, so in a sense it

feels like paving a way for teaching the future.

HTMMA belongs to a family of charter schools, collectively known as High Tech High. Our

schools in total serve a diverse population of students from all areas of San Diego County

through a lottery-based admissions procedure. Students at our schools are chosen through

the "luck of the draw" based on zip code, parent info session attendance, and an application

of intent to join our schools. In this way, we enjoy a more diverse student community

without the pretense of a merit-based system while also creating a more natural reflection

of the community. We share a community of learners who are relatively aligned with the district

in terms of race, ethnicity, EL and free and reduced lunch.

Comparative chart of breakdown of student population

Today, there are nine schools in the High Tech High charter organization, which has

expanded from the Point Loma campus to North County and Chula Vista. Of those, three are

middle schools, which like all of our schools are founded upon three common design

principles: Personalization, Adult-World Connection, and Common Intellectual Mission. We

base our philosphy on these principles in hopes of offering the most complete support

system to all students on their academic pathway towards higher education.

Personalization ensures that teachers know their students, and in knowing them can provide

the best education and meet the needs of all learners. In addition to their teachers, every

student has an advisor who acts as their personal adult contact with whom they can share

what's going on in school and outside of it. Advisors make a home visit to every new

student to create a personal connection instead of just an academic one. Adult-World

connection offers students a taste of real-world systems through project based learning.

Like a business, students manage their responsibilities, work in teams, and follow real-world

procedures. When I teach video, they learn the steps of pre-production, production, and

post-production just like any professional videographer. Teachers invite guest speakers and

experts in the field, and they commit students to doing more outside of the classroom, such

as service learning in the community. Our common intellectual mission gives students a

chance to work to their highest expectations without a tracking system so that all students

can achieve success of the highest nature. As a project based learning school, we offer

curriculum to students in a digestable format, integrating them in real-world contexts, so

that they feel like they are part of the process of learning instead of just receivers of

content. Through projects, students follow a path, take a journey, and discover through an

exploration of their world. Students also share these journeys in the form of public

exhibitions as well as on their school digital portfolios, a public website space created by all

students in HTH from 6th-12th grade, to display their work.

Although there are now three middle schools in the High Tech High Village, two in Point

Loma and one in San Marcos, HTMMA distinguishes itself as a communications-based,

media-oriented school. Our school offers an exploratory program which

runs on a semester cycle to offer a year's worth of instruction to all students in the

disciplines of Art, Drama, and Multimedia. Each year, all students take a semester-long

course in two of the three courses available. There are now two multimedia programs

serving the middle school level, one at HTMMA and the other in San Marcos, and helping our

digital natives become better at expressing themselves and gaining understanding through

various media. Exploratory courses fulfill visual and performing arts standards as well as

NETS technology standards and offer instruction to each grade-level for one hour per class.

Our class sizes average at 28 students, and the students are divided in teams. In addition to their

exploratory courses, the students are also enrolled in their core subjects, Humanities and Math/

Science. These are each two-hour blocks that are taught by team teachers who work together to

integrate instruction. There are two teaching teams per grade level, making a total of six teams in

the school. These classes integrate the use of technology in the classroom and Web 2.0 practices

into their curriculum, and often collaborate with the exploratory teachers to create major

exhibitions of student learning. Students receive a secondary path of learning that fulfills a more

social/emotional context in their advisories and x-block. In advisory, our students are building

service learning skills by spreading out into the community to perform various clean-ups, support

for other schools, and humanitarian acts. Each Monday morning, advisories, which are

made up of mixed students in 6-8th grade, meet to start off the week and check in or

debrief community service activities. We also meet once a month for a Community

meeting, a forum where the whole school joins together on a certain theme or activity. We

then rotate community service days on every other half-day Wednesday, where advisories

spend the whole day working together on a project. X-Block is offered every Tuesday and

Friday afternoon for one hour of instruction that provides a more relaxed context for

students to get physical education or develop skills in areas of music, crafts, or dance. In

the effort to offer language at our school, I've been sharing my knowledge of French during

this hour.

As students enjoy many opportunities for growth, teachers at our school also gain valuable

experiences for professional development and collaboration. As teachers, we are

encouraged to work together, to join with other schools on projects and to share our

teaching practices with our colleagues creating collective resources and opportunities. HTH

is also the first to offer an adult-learning program through Teacher credentialing and a

Graduate school of Education. Thus, teachers work as practitioners, observing other

teachers, reflecting upon their own work, joining in study groups, planning community

meetings, facilitating staff meetings, communicating through the use of digital portfolios and

making connections with the educational community at large.

Classroom setting

I am a multimedia teacher at HTMMA and I teach 6th graders in the fall semester and 8th

graders in the spring semester. My class is taught in a lab fitted with 13 G5 Macintosh

computers. This offers each class about a 2:1 computer ratio. The programs I use teach

students skills in wordprocessing, video production, photographic manipulation, graphic

design and web design. I use remote desktop, a useful program for monitoring student use

of the computers. With only an hour per lesson to teach the complex processes of

multimedia creation, I divide the class time to offer hands-on instruction, lecture or tutorial,

and reflective practices, such as journaling. Students spend about 30 minutes a day on the

computer or in a hands-on project. The rest of the time is for first thing focus (a beginning

exercise in reflection) direct instruction, student planning, group planning, and/or layout or

pre-production depending on the project. Students work individually on projects such as

creating their digital portfolios, or in teams, making a video or poster. The content I teach

falls under the main umbrellas of media literacy, communications, and visual arts. Students

are building valuable critical thinking skills, 21st century skills, and creating visual art with

the aid of a computer or digital technology. I have a cabinet of resources, including digital

cameras, digital camcorders, a green screen, tripods, dollys, and audio equipment which

allows students the facility to use real-world technologies in the classroom. Through the

use of technology, students learn to make professional work, using professional standards

derived from the real world professions. This is in hopes of inspiring students towards

careers in visual arts, and recognizing that these skills will help them grow in any field, but

are also a recognizable field in themselves. Through teaching a class such as multimedia,

students open up to the possibilities of becoming film directors, game designers, graphic

artists, videographers, photographers, computer programmers, and engineers. I hope

to inspire them to use technology as a tool for creating their futures. I always say, they are

in control of the media, not the other way around. As producers of content and not just

mindless consumers, they will gain insight into how to reach out to the world through their

creativity.

Methods

Data Collection

Surveys

I will conduct pre-and post surveys in one of my classes of 28 students to find out how they

perceive their own identity and the world around them. I’m curious to discover initially what the

students think about their own interactions with the community in which they live, the people in

their lives, and their perception of themselves starting middle school. The preliminary survey

will help me to select the students I will focus on later for interviews and work samples. I will

try to select students who represent the range of diversity in the classroom on the levels of what

kinds of learners they are, how they answer the questions differently, technological knowledge

base and gender.

I will survey one class of 28 6th graders before and after the DS project, using a Google form,

which will ask questions such as the following:

If you could tell everyone in the world one story, what story would you tell?

(A) A story about me

(B) A story about a family member

(C) A story about a friend

(D) A story about someone in my community

(E) Other ___________________

Interviews/Focus Groups

To gain more insight into what happens when students use digital storytelling, I will conduct

small group and individual interviews to track changes in perceptions of self and others over

time. I’m interested in finding out how students view the process of digital storytelling from

beginning to end, and what ideas, questions, experiences come out of the process. In conducting

interviews in the before, mid-point, and after project stages for each digital story, I will hopefully

learn about how students use digital storytelling and how their thinking evolves.

A sample question on identity:

Tell me a story about a time you felt like you were noticed or recognized for who you are?

A sample question on empathy:

Tell me a story about a time when you felt like you understood someone else and what made it

possible for you?

A sample question on community:

How do you define community and why?

Blogs/Digital Portfolios

I will use these two methods to collect data about their project process and final work samples.

Each student will have a blog to document their project process and experiences. Blogs will be

required to post work samples from writing exercises, drawings, videos, reflections and story

drafts. The purpose will be to create a community of learners in the classroom, interconnected

by their digital reflective workspace.

The Digital Portfolio will serve as an online assessment tool for me to review their work. Every

student will post their final work and reflections here to be graded. It will be their window to the

world to share their best work and to show case their professionalism. I will be looking for the

range of final projects that my focus students produce and post here.

Data Analysis

Surveys

The survey data I will collect will help me determine the students for the focus of my research.

The data from the Google form is entered directly into an excel spreadsheet, that will give me a

clear idea of how students answer similarly or differently from one another. The data I collect

from surveys will also help me to track how the students’ answers change over time to determine

the effects of using digital storytelling.

Interviews/Focus Groups

I will transcribe and video record interviews to help me gain more insight into the focus group of

students and how they progress through the digital storytelling projects. Their answers will

reflect current attitudes towards digital storytelling, comfort levels with storytelling in general,

relationships with peers, family members and the greater community.

Blogs/Digital Portfolios

I will analyze the information I receive from blogs to help further my understanding of how my

students are experiencing digital storytelling through tracking the process through their eyes.

Their work drafts, weekly reflections, and video commentary will help me to understand how

they experience telling stories. I will seek out different comments that recur on the blogs and use

them to better understand how they are feeling about digital storytelling.

The digital portfolio will help me assess and analyze the final products of the digital storytelling

project. They will be the final indicator to answering my question about what happens when

students use digital storytelling.

Timeline

August 2010Refine action research proposal

Send home letter to families regarding research project

September 2010Begin Phase I and II of the DS Project

Collect data and conduct pre-post surveys, interviews, and reflections of the process

October-December 2010Finish Phase I of the DS project

Continue production of Phase I

Finish data collection

January 2011-February 2011Host a screening for Phase I DS project

Analyze data and findings

Begin Phase II Post-production

March-April 2011Refine findings and revise/edit research

Finalize post-production on Phase II

May 2011

Submit final action research thesis for review and revision.

June 2011Turn in final thesis research and Phase II film. Update final DP.

Works Cited/References

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