Jim Prentzas (Editor)
Democritus University of Thrace, School of Education Sciences, Department of Education Sciences in Early Childhood, Nea Chili, Alexandroupolis, Greece

Series: Education in a Competitive and Globalizing World
BISAC: EDU010000

This book is an edited collection of chapters regarding the integration of digital stories in the classroom, focusing on early childhood and primary education. Storytelling has always been an effective way of teaching all ranges of subjects at all educational levels, especially in early childhood and primary education. Digital storytelling combines the advantages of storytelling and digital tools. Digital stories attract the interest of students and provide them with motives to take part in learning activities in collaboration with their classmates and teachers. They have become a popular resource of Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

Digital stories can be a valuable tool to educators. However, as is the case with many ICT resources, teachers need practical ideas about how to integrate them in teaching and learning. This book covers a gap in the international bibliography regarding digital storytelling. It discusses teaching scenarios that exploit digital stories in a wide range of subjects in early childhood and primary education. Subjects covered in teaching scenarios discussed in this book include language, time concepts, music, poetry, social tolerance in multicultural societies, mathematics, environmental issues, foreign language learning, healthy nutrition, mythology and geography. Such a diversity of issues concerning integration of digital stories in early childhood and primary education has not been dealt with in other published books until now.

The discussed teaching scenarios involve two- and three-dimensional digital stories implemented with the visual programming tools Scratch and Alice. Scratch is implemented by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and enables the creation of two-dimensional multimedia applications. Alice is implemented by Carnegie Mellon and enables the creation of three-dimensional multimedia applications. Both of these tools are available at no charge and are popular in education throughout the world. The created digital stories have been combined with self-assessment e-activities created with JClic to provide further advantages to students. JClic is a free software tool implemented in Spain that enables the creation of interactive assessment activities addressed to early childhood and elementary education.

The book is organized into three main parts and consists of ten chapters. The first part consists of two chapters discussing general background issues concerning storytelling, ICT and digital storytelling in education. The second part consists of four chapters discussing teaching scenarios involving early childhood education. The third part consists of four chapters discussing teaching scenarios regarding primary education. (Imprint: Nova)