Why make digital storytelling? What are the benefits? We are trying to find theoretical and practical answers in this serie, where we ask the question: what is it good for?

“In our experience, digital stories have wide appeal among children, in part simply because they are multimodal and digital, and thereby allow individuals those compositional means and rights that used to be associated just with the world of mass media”

In the paper “Locating the Semiotic Power of Multimodality” the authors, Glynda Hull and Mark Evan Nelson, examine what makes digital storytelling so appealing and helpful for at-risk youth. With a theoretical focus on new literacies or multi-literacies they analyze the effects of learning through a different system of signification.

The authors notes that it’s problematic that the educational politics (In US. red) outline a focus on reading and writing as the only way to be literate. The new forms of reading and composing should be considered as supplement to the traditional perspective on literacy rather than a treath.

In thinking of multimodal texts, the student suddenly have a array of choices to make about semiotic features, and the process of design becomes more diverse. He/She has more choices to be made and there will be more possibilities that the student find that semiotic significant system which express his feelings.

”The point is that images, written text, music a so forth each respectively impart certain kinds of meanings more easily and naturally than others. ”

Reference:
Locating the Semiotic Power of Multimodality
By Glynda Hull and Mark Evan Nelson