Photo stories and L2 teaching

 

    Above is a photo story I made named " Grow up" using Stupeflix. Stupeflix is one of all kinds of online software for making photo stories. They provide the feature of integrating your photos, texts, music and animation together，users can easily create their own stories using them.
     It also can be a good helper in language teaching class. Both teacher and students can learn to use it because of its user-friendliness. For example, students can use it to make their journals more dramatic and easy to share. In china, many teachers ask their students to write a journal every week on exercise book, in my memory, it was really a boring task. However, if we ask our students to write journals using these online tool, I think it will be different. I enjoy the process of making it, so I guess my students to a larger degree will also like it.
     For teacher, these tools to make photo story are  also useful. Although my experience of teaching in class is not rich until now, I know sometimes it is hard and time-consuming to find a video appropriate to use in class for warming up or other purposes. These story making tools provide the feasibility for teaching to make their own videos which fit their teaching plans.
      In sum, online photo story tools can make class more creative, interesting and also bring convenience for teacher. It is worth a try.

Digital Stroytelling in L2 Class

 
     According to the website of Educational Use of Digital Storytelling, "digital storytelling at its most basic core is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories." As the development of modern technology, the traditional learning activity --- storytelling can be conduct online, that is what digital storytelling means.
     Digital storytelling is more creative and more vivid than the traditional one, since it integrates music, video, picture together. Moreover, there are a lot of user-friendly software online which we can choose to use in our class, so everyone no matter teacher or student can both learn to use it easily.
     Digital storytelling can be conducted to practice student's L2 speaking skill. For example, teacher or student can prepare a video for this purpose first, then let students  make an oral story according to the video. Students can also write down their stories, then they can develop their writing skill. In the storytelling activity, most stories are narrative，therefore teacher can conduct this activity focusing on the use of tense. So teacher can provide help immediately when students have problems or produce incorrect tense. Therefore, digital storytelling is a method good to use in L2 class.