Teaching Digital Storytelling

Inspiring Voices through Online Narratives

Edited by Sheila Marie Aird and Thomas P. Mackey

Everyone has a story to tell, and this book will inspire and guide readers to teach and learn through the production of digital narratives. This book presents the stories of educators who through digital storytelling inspire students from diverse communities to construct their empowering digital narratives. Educators from a wide range of disciplines present innovative case studies of teaching digital storytelling through the lens of personal narratives, metaliteracy, and information literacy. They describe how teaching students to tell their personal digital stories prepares them as learners who are reflective while playing active learner roles such as producer, publisher, and collaborator. As an innovative resource for teaching and learning with digital media, this book:

Combines the theory and practice of digital storytelling with metaliteracy and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education
Explores how to inspire learners to share their original digital narratives
Offers the opportunity to explore and address issues of race, class, and gender to give voice to these issues as part of the storytelling process
Investigates the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion in writing and producing original digital narratives
Examines novel approaches to collaborative digital storytelling and peer review
Presents pioneering models for global digital storytelling among international learners online
Describes empowering digital narratives constructed by students who found and shared their voices through this creative process
Provides inventive models for teaching effective planning through well-written scripts and visual storyboards
Offers openly-available resources such as rubrics, assignment descriptions, and digital technologies
Showcases the application of metaliteracy OER in digital storytelling learning activities and courses

Through this book, faculty, librarians, school library media specialists, and instructional designers will learn how to teach the theory and practice of digital storytelling. This innovative resource will also empower students to reflect on their roles as digital storytellers and metaliterate learners in today’s dynamic and evolving information environment.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 250 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-5381-7291-9 • Hardback • April 2024 • $155.00 • (£119.00)

978-1-5381-7292-6 • Paperback • April 2024 • $65.00 • (£50.00)

978-1-5381-7293-3 • eBook • March 2024 • $61.50 • (£47.00)

Series: Innovations in Information Literacy

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Library & Information Science / General

Teaching Digital Storytelling

Inspiring Voices through Online Narratives

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Everyone has a story to tell, and this book will inspire and guide readers to teach and learn through the production of digital narratives. This book presents the stories of educators who through digital storytelling inspire students from diverse communities to construct their empowering digital narratives. Educators from a wide range of disciplines present innovative case studies of teaching digital storytelling through the lens of personal narratives, metaliteracy, and information literacy. They describe how teaching students to tell their personal digital stories prepares them as learners who are reflective while playing active learner roles such as producer, publisher, and collaborator. As an innovative resource for teaching and learning with digital media, this book:
- Combines the theory and practice of digital storytelling with metaliteracy and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education
- Explores how to inspire learners to share their original digital narratives
- Offers the opportunity to explore and address issues of race, class, and gender to give voice to these issues as part of the storytelling process
- Investigates the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion in writing and producing original digital narratives
- Examines novel approaches to collaborative digital storytelling and peer review
- Presents pioneering models for global digital storytelling among international learners online
- Describes empowering digital narratives constructed by students who found and shared their voices through this creative process
- Provides inventive models for teaching effective planning through well-written scripts and visual storyboards
- Offers openly-available resources such as rubrics, assignment descriptions, and digital technologies
- Showcases the application of metaliteracy OER in digital storytelling learning activities and courses
Through this book, faculty, librarians, school library media specialists, and instructional designers will learn how to teach the theory and practice of digital storytelling. This innovative resource will also empower students to reflect on their roles as digital storytellers and metaliterate learners in today’s dynamic and evolving information environment.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 250 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-5381-7291-9 • Hardback • April 2024 • $155.00 • (£119.00)

978-1-5381-7292-6 • Paperback • April 2024 • $65.00 • (£50.00)

978-1-5381-7293-3 • eBook • March 2024 • $61.50 • (£47.00)

Series: Innovations in Information Literacy

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Library & Information Science / General

Author

Sheila Marie Aird, PhD is European Director of International Programs for Empire State University and oversees the American delivered programs at the university’s four international locations. Dr. Aird is also an associate professor at the university. She received her Ph.D. in Latin and Caribbean History and MA in history from Howard University. During her final year of research at Howard University, she was awarded the prestigious Sasakawa Fellowship from the Nippon Foundation in Japan. Dr. Aird also holds a BA in Anthropology and a MA in Anthropology with a focus on Historical Archeology from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Dr. Aird considers herself a cultural historian and is most interested in public scholarship in its many forms. Her passion lies in making historical and cultural moments come alive while educating the public through the medium of documentary and film, photography and museum exhibits. Her areas of interests and focus include Digital Storytelling, Public History, children of colonial enslavement, Critical Race theory and issues of race in the African Diaspora community. Dr. Aird has presented on her work both domestically and internationally. Presently, Dr. Aird is working on two projects. One focuses on women in California who are changing their lives with the help of a community. The other project co-developed from an Oral History Association Emerging Crisis research grant with a colleague, focuses on the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and Irma. The project will offer first- hand accounts from the citizens most impacted in Puerto Rico and St. Thomas V.I. and will include the environmental, social and cultural impact on the most vulnerable citizens impacted by one of the most devastating hurricanes to hit the islands in 2017.
Thomas P. Mackey, PhD is professor of arts and media and program coordinator for the BA and BS Programs in Digital Media Arts at Empire State University. He designs and teaches courses in Digital Storytelling, Information Design, Ethics of Digital Art and Design, and History and Theory of New Media. Dr. Mackey is the recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Scholarship and Creative Activities (2022) and the Dr. Susan H Turben Chair in Mentoring (2021-22). He has an honorary appointment as Extraordinary Professor, Research Unit Self-Directed Learning, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa. Dr. Mackey serves as a Board Member, and most recently as Board Chair for the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society, the largest animal welfare organization in the Capital Region of New York.
Dr. Mackey’s research focuses on metaliteracy – a pedagogical model he developed with Prof Trudi E. Jacobson –that prepares individuals as self-directed learners in collaborative information environments. He is interested in the intersections among metaliteracy, self-directed learning, and multimodality, to develop metaliterate learners as reflective producers of information in multiple modes, including digital narratives. Dr. Mackey has published four books with Prof. Jacobson on metaliteracy, including the first co-authored manuscript on this topic entitled Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy (2014). They also co-edited Metaliteracy in Practice (2016) and Metaliterate Learning for a Post-Truth World (2019). Their most recent co-authored book Metaliteracy in a Connected World: Developing Learners as Producers (2022) is the recipient of the 2024 Divergent Publication Award for Excellence in Literacy in a Digital Age Research. They have published peer-reviewed articles and book chapters about metaliteracy and have presented on this topic both nationally and internationally.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
List of Figures, Tables, and Textboxes
Chapter 1: Metaliteracy and Global Digital Storytelling: Building Shared Learning Communities
Thomas P. Mackey and Sheila M. Aird
Chapter 2: Digital Storytelling and Cognitive Justice in Academic Information Services in Southern Africa—A Story Waiting to Be Discovered
Brenda van Wyk
Chapter 3: Poetic Ethnography as Digital Storytelling: Encouraging Metaliteracy and
Creating Meta-Theater
Kimmika L. H. Williams-Witherspoon
Chapter 4: Voicing and Agency through Autoethnography
Muchativugwa Liberty Hove
Chapter 5: “It Was Awesome. No One was Telling Us What We Had to Write!”: Empowering Young Writers through Digital Bookmaking
Logan Rath and Kathleen Olmstead
Chapter 6: The Metaliteracy of Memes: Having Students Track the Flow of Information
Beth Carpenter
Chapter 7: Who Takes Care of the Carer? Turning the Lens on the Facilitator
Deidré van Rooyen and Michelle Nothling
Chapter 8: Typhoid of 1843 on StoryMaps: Collaborating to Tell Local History
Kimberly A. Plassche, Claire Schen, and Keith C. Mages
Chapter 9: Reflections on Digital Storytelling as a Learner-Centered Approach to Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Classrooms
Thandiwe Matyobeni
About the Editors
About the Contributors
Index

Reviews

Digital storytelling is a powerful tool for learning. Editors Sheila Marie Aird and Thomas P. Mackey and the excellent chapter authors understand this strength, delving into a range of educational opportunities where digital storytelling’s impact informs and inspires not only students, but also readers of this book. This volume is notable for its connections to metaliteracy and information literacy, its geographical reach and perspectives, and its suggestions for open resources. Readers often skip the front matter in books, jumping directly into the heart of the content. However, I urge them not to miss the scene-setting forward by the renowned Bryan Alexander. I was delighted to have this volume join the Innovations in Information Literacy series. As the series title indicates, included volumes must strike out into new and exciting territory, expanding the vision and potential of information literacy. This volume does this beautifully.

— Trudi Jacobson, Distinguished Librarian Emerita, University at Albany, SUNY