We identified digital storytelling
as one such appropriate mediating tool for
collective engagement in creative meaningmaking
processes on the concept of urban
sustainability. But what is digital storytelling?
« 14 » Alan Levine and Bryan Alexander
(2008) define it as the practice of telling
a story through the use of digital media. In
technical terms, digital storytelling is mostly
supported by short videos including images
and/or video clips, soundtrack music,
and/or narration, and also by media slideshows,
interactive presentations, and hypertext
embedded in Web 2.0 tools such as
blogs, podcasts etc. In the classic model of
digital storytelling, pioneered by the Center
for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, California,
digital stories are narrated in the storyteller’s
own voice. They are produced by using
inexpensive, readily available software,
with a focus on compressing the elements of
the film into a short piece only a few minutes
long (Lambert 2002).
« 15 » Digital storytelling has been applied
in a broad spectrum of educational
contexts and in a variety of mediation mechanisms
provided by new technology. In
higher education only, the practice of digital
storytelling spreads across a broad range of
disciplines, from history and literacy /ESL
studies, to knowledge management, business
and leadership, community planning,
psychology, gender studies, social and cultural
history, and much more (Benick 2012).
Nevertheless, there are very few applications
of digital storytelling in the service of interdisciplinary
domain learning, such as in the
context of learning about sustainability.
« 16 » When more than one person is
involved in the practice of digital storytelling,
then we refer to either group storytelling
(Benick 2012) or collaborative storytelling
(Gabriel & Connell 2010). Flávia Santoro
and Patrick Brézillon (2005) define group
storytelling as a collective sense-building
activity, during which many individuals
contribute their ideas and interpretations
of a shared repertoire of experiences. Yiannis
Gabriel and Con Connell (2010) refer to
co-created stories, stories that are created
simultaneously as different people interact
and add specific elements to the narrative;
thus the person who introduces a dilemma
or a choice into the plot is not the one who
has to decide its outcome. Joint story construction
supported by collaborative constructionist
principles, is also put to use by
Inmaculada Arnedillo-Sanchez (2008) and
Mike Sharples et al. (2009) using mobile
learning technologies.
« 17 » Finally, from a constructionist
point of view, collaborative storytelling is
the collective creation of a meta-story from
individual stories constructed in parallel
(Freidus & Hlubinka 2002). Along this line
of thought, stories become οbjects to think
with, i.e, constructs that evoke reflection,
negotiation and dialogue, involving and
inducing new ideas and understandings.
Their quality ameliorates as the dialogue
progresses, and as successive versions are
presented and exposed to an in vitro audience,
i.e., the other groups within the community.
It is therefore almost by definition
that the co-construction of a digital story is
a collaborative creative learning process and
a product by itself.