Thesis (M.A.)--University of Texas at El Paso, 2009. / Title from title screen. Vita. CD-ROM. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Thesis (MPhil.(Informatics))-University of Pretoria, 2008. / Abstract in English. Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: This study follows three secondary teachers as they facilitate a digital storytelling project with their students for the first time. All three teachers were not specifically trained in digital storytelling in order to investigate what happens when a digital storytelling novice tries to do a project like this with his or her students. The study follows two high school English teachers and one middle school math teacher. Each teacher's experience is shared in a case study, and all three case studies are compared and contrasted in a cross-case analysis. There is a discussion of the types of projects the teachers conducted and any challenges they faced. Strategies to overcome the challenges are also included. A variety of assessment rubrics are included in the appendix. In the review of literature, the history of digital storytelling is illuminated, as are historical concepts of literacy. There is also an exploration of twenty-first century skills including multiliteracies such as media and technology literacy. Both the teachers and their students offer suggestions to future teachers taking on digital storytelling projects. The dissertation ends with a discussion of future scholarship in educational uses of digital storytelling. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction 2011

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD (Post-School Studies) / This study is located in engineering education at a South African university of technology, and is theorised using relational ontologies such as critical posthumanism, feminist new materialism and non-representational theory. It explores the potential of a digital storytelling intervention in an undergraduate geomatics diploma programme. Geomatics qualifications in South Africa are critiqued for their embedded humanism and subtle anthropocentrism despite attempts at post-apartheid curricular reform. Additionally, these qualifications are focused on technical content, and heavily influenced by Western knowledges.

abstract: As digital media practices become readily available in today's classrooms, literacy and literacy instruction are changing in profound ways (Alvermann, 2010). Professional organizations emphasize the importance of integrating new literacies (New London Group, 1996) practices into language-arts instruction (IRA, 2009; NCTE, 2005). As a result, teachers search for effective ways to incorporate the new literacies in an effort to engage students. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate the potential of digital storytelling as participatory media for writing instruction. This case study was conducted during the fall semester of 2012 in one first-grade classroom and one second-grade classroom in the Southwestern United States. The study addressed ten interrelated research questions relating to how primary-grade students performed in relation to the Common Core writing standards, how they were motivated, how they formed a meta- language to talk about their writing, how they developed identities as writers, and how they were influenced by their teachers' philosophies and instructional approaches. Twenty-two first-grade students and 24 second-grade students used the MovieMaker software to create digital stories of personal narratives. Data included field notes, interviews with teachers and students, teacher journals, my own journal, artifacts of teachers' lesson plans, photographs, students' writing samples, and their digital stories. Qualitative data were analyzed by thematic analysis (Patton, 1990) and discourse analysis (Gee, 2011). Writing samples were scored by rubrics based on the Common Core State Standards. The study demonstrated how digital storytelling can be used to; (a) guide teachers in implementing new literacies in primary grades; (b) illustrate digital storytelling as writing; (c) develop students' meta-language to talk about writing; (d) impact students' perceptions as writers; (e) meet Common Core State Standards for writing; (f) improve students' skills as writers; (g) build students' identities as writers; (h) impact academic writing; (i) engage students in the writing process; and (j) illustrate the differences in writing competencies between first- and second-grade students. The study provides suggestions for teachers interested in incorporating digital storytelling in primary-grade classrooms. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction 2013

A pesquisa teve como objetivo principal analisar, por meio de seus próprios discursos, os processos de construção de identidade negra de jovens do Ensino Fundamental II de uma escola pública da periferia da cidade de São Paulo. O estudo de caso foi a técnica de pesquisa adotada e os procedimentos metodológicos se inseriram na pesquisa participante. O quadro teórico sobre o qual se assentou a pesquisa teve como base a Educomunicação, as práticas do Digital Storytelling, os estudos de linguagem empreendidos por Bakhtin, a Análise de Discurso (de linha francesa) e os conceitos relacionados ao \"ser negro\" no contexto sociocultural brasileiro. A pesquisa de campo contou com a realização de oficinas educomunicativas com um grupo de jovens de uma mesma sala de aula, capacitando-os para a criação de vídeos tendo como base suas histórias de vida, que constituíram parte fundamental do corpus da pesquisa. Para além do trabalho com as habilidades técnicas, o projeto contou com rodas de discussão a respeito do conceito de identidade em suas dimensões sociais e individuais. Cabe ressaltar que também foram objeto de análise as estratégias educomunicativas empregadas pela pesquisadora e os discursos dos alunos registrados ao longo do desenvolvimento da pesquisa. Para a elaboração da narrativa audiovisual, foram utilizados os procedimentos do Digital Storytelling e, dessa forma, pôde-se observar a produção de sentidos identitários individuais e sociais, na medida em que esta coloca em marcha um processo em que os sujeitos - os alunos - constituem-se como autores de suas próprias histórias. Os resultados da pesquisa indicam que, ao se constituírem como instância enunciadora, tais sujeitos dão início a um processo de conscientização em relação a si mesmos e ao grupo social, o que se torna possível graças ao distanciamento propiciado pelo ato de se autonarrar. Deve-se enfatizar que esse processo de construção identitária, de reconhecimento de si-mesmo, ganha corpo por meio da alteridade (Bakhtin), que pode propiciar a aquisição da consciência social de si mesmo e, assim, do \"ser negro\" na sociedade brasileira. Ademais, ressalta-se a importância da abordagem educomunicativa no processo conduzido junto aos jovens, pois se entende que o mesmo foi motivador da criação de um ecossistema comunicativo, necessário para que a pesquisadora - ali atuando como mediadora - e os sujeitos pesquisados ultrapassassem possíveis barreiras da relação professor-aluno para que, libertos, pudessem falar de si mesmos e de suas experiências, tendo, inclusive, os seus relatos digitalizados. / The research aimed to analyze, through their own speeches, the processes of identity construction of young black students of a public school in the outskirts of São Paulo. The case study was the research technique used and the methodological procedures were inserted in the participant research. The theoretical framework on which sat the research was based on Educommunication, the practices of Digital Storytelling, the language studies undertaken by Bakhtin, Discourse Analysis (French line) and the concepts related to \"being black\" in the Brazilian sociocultural context. The field research included educommunicative workshops with a group of young people in the same classroom, enabling them to create videos based on their life stories, which were an essential part of the research corpus. In addition to working with the technical skills, the project had discussion groups about the concept of identity in its social and individual aspects. Note that also have been considered educommunicative strategies employed by the researcher and the speeches of the students registered during the development of the research. For the preparation of audiovisual narrative, were used the procedures of Digital Storytelling and thus it could be observed the production of individual senses of identity and social living, to the extent that this puts in motion a process in which the subjects - students - constitute themselves as authors of their own stories. The survey results indicate that, when constituted as an enunciative instance, these individuals initiate a process of awareness about themselves and the social group, which is possible thanks to the distance afforded by the act of narrating yourself. It should also be noted that this process of identity construction, the recognition of self, takes shape through the idea of otherness (Bakhtin), which can provide the acquisition of social consciousness of itself and thus of \"being black\" in Brazilian society. Moreover, it emphasizes the importance of the process approach educommunication proposal led to the youth, because we understand that it was motivating the creation of the so-called communicative ecosystem, necessary for the researcher - there acting as a mediator - and the subjects surveyed exceeded potential barriers in teacher-student relationship so that freedmen could talk about themselves and their experiences, and even having their reports digitalized.

Grounded in the a Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996), this dissertation reports on the implementation of a fourth semester French curriculum informed by Cope and Kalantzis's (2000, 2009, 2015) framework of learning by design, with a focus on visual and critical media literacy development to enable intermediate French students to consider multimodal texts from the perspective of consumers as well as producers and to understand the meaning potential that exists between and within the semiotic resources afforded in media production (Nelson and Kern, 2012). Drawing upon "the value of postmethod [and] postlinguistic teaching… which are not looking at language learning in the traditional sense… [but] rather at learners’ acquisition of… the ability to reflect on textualization and contextualization, considering language as one important dimension of semiosis among others" (Nelson and Kern, 2012, p. 61), this dissertation project examined how the frameworks of visual and critical media literacy within the process of design enhanced students' voice and agency in the foreign language classroom. The first inquiry aims to explore if and how a curriculum centered around visual and critical media literacies creates the conditions to 1) foster students' awareness of media ethics in the consumption and production of everyday media, and 2) engage students in a process of reflection upon the meanings created by semiotics resources used in mediated-texts, and their impact on shaping their vision of the world. Findings demonstrated that the implementation of visual and critical media literacy frameworks gave students the opportunity to reflect on their use of media and the ethical implications, and to foster students' greater understanding and interest in self-reflection and considerations of others. The second inquiry aims to demonstrate, through the production of digital storytelling, how instructors might address diversity in foreign language classrooms by 1) allowing students to connect universal themes (e.g. technology, friendship, immigration) with their personal stories, and 2) by giving them the opportunities to display their uniqueness by using their own voices and positioning themselves as participative agents for social change. Findings demonstrated that digital storytelling fosters classroom diversity by allowing the exploration of individual differences and enhancing the understanding of the distinctiveness of every individual. The third inquiry, a case study explores how Digital StoryTelling (DST) 1) contributes to students' understanding of the way semiotic resource choice and orchestration construct layers of meaning and satisfy the purposes of the message conveyed to the audience, and 2) supports students' agency through the process of design. Findings showed the potential of using multimodality projects as they allow students' emerging literacies to take center stage in the foreign language classroom and increase students’ agency and ‘semiotic agility’ (Prior, 2010; Thorne, 2013).

Latino im/migrants are often portrayed in negative and stereotypical ways in mainstream U.S. media. This dissertation utilizes Ethnographic Content Analysis to analyze news segments about Latino im/migrants from Fox News, MSNBC and Univisión between 2010 and 2012 and digital storytelling with a group of Latino im/migrant parents in central Florida. First, I questioned if a Spanish-language news media source constructed Latino im/migrant family-focused stories differently than mainstream English-language sources. Utilizing Critical Race Theory as a theoretical lens, I conclude that English and Spanish-language news stations portray Latino im/migrants in different ways. Fox News portrays Latino im/migrants in a generally neutral or negative tone, MSNBC offers a generally neutral or positive tone, and Univisión offers a generally positive tone. Moreover, Fox News generally frames Latino im/migrants as a “problem to be solved” with the implied solution almost always being deportation or exclusion. Univisión generally framed the global, neoliberal, capitalist system that creates the need for mass migration as the “problem” and identified activism and social change as the “solution.” These analyses are supported with evidence from stock video footage from segments that often dehumanizes im/migrants as well as use of rhetoric during segments (namely phrases like “illegal” and “anchor baby”). Second, I questioned if, when offered the opportunity to represent themselves, would Latino im/migrant parents construct images of parenthood that both acknowledge and transcend the mainstream news media discourse? I conclude that the digital stories Latino im/migrant parents created in 2009 represent a broader, fuller picture of Latino im/migrant parenthood and that these stories rely more heavily on lived, narrative experience even after considering the change in format from news segment to digital story. Digital stories provide an effective vehicle for conducting participant observation and ethnography. Moreover, I argue that digital storytelling has the potential to be effective in increasing voice and building capacity for positive social change.

Stories have the ability to evoke feelings and emotions in humans and have since been used by brands as part of corporate communication, communicating their vision and values. However, the growing technological trends have not only shifted the platforms for communication but also changed the techniques of communication as audiences on social media expect two-way communication instead of the traditionally used one-way communication. This is exacerbated by the power of word-of-mouth on social media as well as the presence of digital natives who are increasingly visual in their nderstanding and are immersed in their lives online. This has given rise to the use of visual storytelling as a corporate communication strategy as brands are using it to connect, transmit and receive messages from their audiences. This study examines the ways in which South African brands are making use of visual storytelling on social media and aims to determine the extent to which the use of visual storytelling promotes brand-audience engagement. The study is based on the philosophical assumptions of the Visual Rhetoric framework, which is concerned with the symbolic processes by which images perform communication. The hermeneutic – interpretive research method design is applied to justify knowledge produced by this study. A content analysis of six social media pages was conducted, looking at the visual content posted as well as interpretation of comments and interactions by fans of the selected brand pages. Overall, South African brands make use of visual storytelling to promote brand-audience engagement but they are not utilising the communication strategy to its fullest extent.

Colombia has some 2.5 million emigrants (KNOMAD 2016), many of whom likely experience diaspora as a state of mind and transnationalism as a feature of their familial interactions. Storytelling constitutes an intersection at which individuals and families create and recreate themselves. Today, much of this process is mediated via information and communication technologies (ICTs). Hence, the central question guiding the thesis is: How do ICTs catalyze and constrain storytelling within transnational families? Drawing from information gathered through in-depth semi-structured interviews with six Colombian families with members who immigrated to Canada from Colombia, this thesis investigates the technologically mediated familial interactions and storytelling of 12 adult Colombians residing in Montreal, and six of their respective family members who remain in Colombia. The participants report that prior to migrating their familial stories were mainly oral and occurred in very warm face-to-face situations whereas after migrating their family narratives and stories are being altered in various ways through the presence, interactive, and multimodal affordances ICTs provide.