Our main focus is how a method called Digital Storytelling can promote a more reflected and responsible use of ICT in homes and schools. Our assumptions are that teachers are hesitant to use ICT because they lack opportunities to master methods. When trained to use Digital Storytelling they will be enabled to use a method which gives students opportunities to reflect on how they use ICT in private life and develop competencies in combining their budding ICT skills with their emotions. Students will provide insights in how they reflect and move into a stage whereby they can expand their ethical insights and moral conduct. They will also find a stage where they can reflect on what they learn and how they can use the semiotic resources they have acquired and convert to formal contexts.

Buckingham suggests that: “… it is important to know much more about children’s experience of media production not just in the context of education, but also(particularly) in the context of the home and the peer group” (Buckingham 2005, p.53). In our study we rely on recent research on how “Digital Storytelling” can improve the ability to reflect on their emotions and actions (Haug, Jamissen & Ohlmann, 2012). The method relies on engaging students in developing stories from their personal lives and connect to a message about the world, expressed with words, images and sounds, compiled and processed as a visual story of three minutes duration. The process of production offers contexts whereby students explore their own emotions and experiences about the borders of self and other, of ethical and moral questions.

The method demands a basic platform of skills and knowledge but is easily learned and workable in large classrooms with many students. Experiments show that student not only develop digital skills, but also manage to explore their existential concerns and link them to what the school intends as formal learning. Digital storytelling is a form of “mediatized storytelling”. Producing the story and showing it in the classroom, provides what Holmes & Gardner (2006) calls communal constructivism. Making a story, with words, sound and images invokes a wide range of learning capabilities, in which most students connect the personal with the “objective”, and provide reflections about the boundaries of the private, personal, general, poetic or factual, boring or engaging, substantial or irrelevant. The “screening”, - when students show their stories is seen as a particularly engaging sequence that involves students in the communal learning process (Kaare & Lundby, 2007). Schultz & Hull (2008) underline that DS became an important part of the New Media Literacy because it opens up for students to use the “semiotical resources” they are otherwise immersed in by TV, radio, Internet, gaming etc. Fritze, Haugsbakk & Nordkvelle (2012) argue that tools like these are pivotal in developing a “visual bildung”, and Hatlehol (2012) demonstrate how DS can be employed to support critical citizenship training in schools. Teaching with DS is outlined in a method which is easily taught in workshops for teachers, relying on internationally acknowledged manuals. 

Buckingham, D. (2005). The Media Literacy of Children and Young People A review of the research literature on behalf of Ofcom. Centre for the Study of Children Youth and Media Institute of Education University of London, London Knowledge Lab. Fritze, Y., Haugsbakk, G. & Nordkvelle, Y. (2012). Visuell danning og kampen mellom ord og bilde. In S. Vettenranta & V. Frantzen (eds), Mediepedagogikk. Trondheim: Tapir. Hatlehol, B. (2012). Aktive medborgere gjennom digital historiefortelling. In Haug, K.H., Jamissen, G. & Ohlmann, C. (eds), Digitalt fortalte historier. Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk. Haug, K.H., Jamissen, G. & Ohlmann, C. (2012). Digitalt fortalte historier. Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk. Holmes, B. & Gardner, J. (2006). E-Learning: Concepts and Practice. Sage: London. Lundby, K. & Kaare, B.H. (2007). The sacred as meaning and belonging in digital storytelling. In Furseth, I. & Leer-Salvesen, P. (eds), Religion in late modernity. Trondheim : Tapir Academic Press. Schultz, K & Hull, G (2008). Literacies in and out of School in the United States. In B. Street & N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 2: Literacy, 239–249.