The human action to form and talk about narrative is instinctual and dates back before the era of history. As Homo Narrnas, human tells stories during one's lifetime and it shows that narrative works as part of human life. But the human's instinct to ...
The human action to form and talk about narrative is instinctual and dates back before the era of history. As Homo Narrnas, human tells stories during one's lifetime and it shows that narrative works as part of human life. But the human's instinct to form and discuss about stories are not applied properly during classes. Therefore the class does not truly apply storytelling; the most basic and natural human characteristic. In case of geography classes, there are many of opportunities to develop diverse stories and apply it in class especially with classes that pertains to learning about spaces and places. But studies to apply storytelling and digital storytelling in geography classes are rarely researched and discussed.
Therefore this study is implemented in order to find out the changes in areas such as creative problem solving, learning motivation, and study achievement test of when storytelling and digital storytelling is applied in geography classes. For this study a four hour class with a preliminary and postliminary inspection was conducted to 136 sixth graders at 'I' and 'N' elementary school within Gangnam and Gangbuk district of Seoul. The students are divided into three different groups: lecture method instruction class, storytelling class, and digital storytelling class with each as the experimental group 1, experimental 2, and control group, respectively. The preliminary and postliminary inspection tests are to measure creative problem solving, and learning motivation. Afterward the results were statistically analyzed to investigate the aspect of the transition. Futhermore, 18 sampled students that represented each group were interviewed.
The results are as followed. Firstly, storytelling and digital storytelling classes are more effective in improving one's creative problem solving than lecture method instruction class. This proofs that the practical and contextual characteristic of storytelling and digital storytelling has improved students real life's problem solving ability. Secondly, storytelling and digital storytelling class acts as an effective main cause in improving learning motivation. The learning motivation in digital storytelling class improved more than the storytelling class. Therefore using diverse digital devices are the most effective way to improve learning motivation. Thirdly, the study achievement test had no effect or various among the experimental and control groups. Lastly when interviewing the sampled students, it was found that the digital storytelling class captured the students' interest during the class the most. During the interview, four out of five students from the digital storytelling class students said that digital storytelling class develops their creative problem solving ability. The students said that the process of forming a digital story made them recalled the concept easier. Furthermore, it was helpful in giving life to contextual content and solving problems. The interview also showed that the process of forming digital stories gave the students an opportunity to examine and develop their thoughts and metacognitive skill.
These analysis resulted in 5 suggestions for geography classes. Firstly, storytelling and digital storytelling classes can be student-led. Usually the storytelling and digital storytelling is done by the teacher. However in this study, the students personally made their own storytelling and digital storytelling. This confirms that student-led storytelling and digital storytelling class is a possibility. Secondly, storytelling and digital storytelling classes contribute to the improvement of students' learning motivation and their creative problem solving. Thirdly, storytelling and digital storytelling class can improve students' literacy. Fourthly, storytelling and digital storytelling class makes it easier for students to recall the concepts. Lastly, this study is meaningful as it suggests specific ways to apply storytelling and digital storytelling in geography class.
To form and tell a story or digital story is a basic human instinct. Therefore studying applicable ways of narrative, storytelling, and digital storytelling is very important. It will be meaningful if this examined student-led storytelling and digital storytelling study is applied in geography classes.