Improving English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Learners’ ICT Literacy Skills through Digital Storytelling

Authors : Emrah Ekmekçi

Pages : 1-9

View : 19 | Download : 9

Publication Date : 2017-12-01

Article Type : Research

Abstract :Building 21st century literacy skills in every field of education has become one of the objectives of educational policies in almost each country. In a broad sense, 21st century skills refer to a set of knowledge, skills, and characteristics which are believed to be of great importance for today’s students’ success in the ever-changing technological environment. There is no doubt that one of these skills which is desired to be enhanced is Information and Communication Technology Literacy Skill (ICT) of today’s students. Educators and educational practitioners have been searching for how to foster students’ ICT literacy skills best so that they can keep up with the recent developments. In this context, EFL learners’ ICT literacy skills need to be improved as they will encounter digital natives when they start teaching. One of the effective ways of fostering ICT literacy skill is to utilize digital storytelling in foreign language classes. Because digital storytelling combines multiple modes of technology such as photographs, music, movie maker and recording tools, video clips, text, audio narration, and etc. to produce successful stories, EFL learners need be competent enough to be able to use these tools effectively. Digital stories enable learners to produce oral, written, and visual messages and to interact with others. The present study attempts to highlight the possible benefits of digital storytelling and indicate how students’ projects as to digital stories help them to improve their ICT literacy skills. To this end, prospective English language teachers’ projects on creating digital stories were examined within the scope of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) course which was offered as an elective course for senior students in the spring term of 2015-2016 academic year at the department of English Language Teacher Education (ELT). Analyses of the projects prepared by the students show that students’ ICT skills can be considered to be highly satisfying in terms of incorporating different technological materials into a single story. It can be concluded that being one of the most important 21st century skills, ICT literacy skill can be enhanced through preparing digital stories to a great extent.
Keywords : digital storytelling, ict skills, technology, language teaching