Digital storytelling in Kindergarten: An alternative tool in children's way of expression

Abstract

This paper refers to Digital Storytelling as an alternative tool enhancing children's way of expression in kindergarten classroom. Storytelling is a global culture depicting the way people live, feel and interact in life. Especially in early childhood storytelling springs naturally in children's play helping them to exercise a great variety of skills. Nowadays, advances in technology offer the opportunity to create a new form of storytelling, namely digital storytelling. The idea of creating a digital story is based on processes similar to those used in traditional stories. On the other hand the story is supplemented with various types of multimedia content. Meaningful integration of technology into kindergarten gives children the opportunity to create their own digital stories and thanks to multimedia technology children are enabled to become co-authors in the story writing process. In this paper a teaching experiment that took place in the kindergarten of an urban area in Greece on February 2012 is described. The teaching experiment lasted three weeks. We present the attempt of creating an educational framework in which the children were given the opportunity to combine various elements and Information Computer Technology tools, in order to express themselves and give birth to a digital story. It was found that children were engaged to the whole process, showed responsibility, self-confidence and they also exercised cooperation skills.