A Digital Storytelling Project in a Multicultural Education Class for Pre-Service Teachers

Overview & Synopsis

Technology integration is an approach which has been stressed in higher education in the USA for several decades. Many colleges and universities now offer online courses and encourage faculty to incorporate technology into courses. Technology integration in teacher education courses is particularly important. In general, pre-service teachers are not very anxious about technology (Lambert and Gong 2010). If the faculty demonstrates how technology can be used in a classroom students are more likely to incorporate technology in their future classrooms (Brush, Glazewski, and Hew 2008). In the present study, 38 pre-service teachers taking a multicultural education course were asked to create a digital story for their final projects. It was expected that the project would give student teachers an opportunity to learn not only the technology but also how to incorporate digital storytelling into the curriculum. The study was conducted in spring 2011 on a course required for all elementary education majors. The digital story project was one of the major assignments in a multicultural education class for pre-service teachers. Overall, the project was successful and most students had a positive feeling about digital storytelling and expressed their intention to use it with their own pupils. Because students were allowed to use any software to create movies, their frustration about using technology was minimised. However, the survey results indicated that some students had a significant misconception about digital storytelling. They thought that teachers always create digital stories, and they simply show them to the children to teach class materials. (Contains 2 figures.)