Case study 2.3: Digital storytelling in Argentina

In Argentina, at Instituto San Francisco de Asis, the coordinator of the English department found a need to integrate technology in the English classes as a way of engaging and motivating ss in their learning process. Viki, the coordinator, saw that the department was relying too much on fixed coursebooks because they did not want parents to complain about having lost money if they decided not to use them so often. Therefore, the department decided to abandon coursebooks all together and to begin designing their own material and curriculum. 

The reasons for this change was to make the class more student- centered and less teacher-centered paying close attention to the needs of the 21st century. To start with, teachers opened a Wiki (http://isfa.wikispaces.com/) to set projects and to keep a record of how they were done.

One of the recent project of this school with 17-year-old ss was a "digital storytelling". The idea was to combine telling A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare by using different multimedia tools. The final version was uploaded on the internet so that parents, classmates and digital visitors would profit from their creations. 

Analysis of this case study according to TPCK model:

- Context: Argentina, San Francisco de Asis school. Project done with 17-year-old ss from secondary school.

- Content: One of the projects was based on A Midsummer Night's Dream, a play written by Shakespeare. Another one involved learners creating their own story.  

- Pedagogy: The animated story had to be done collaboratively. Ss had to choose different famous painting and to connect them somehow in a story. They also had to record the story to go with images in a slideshow. A second project, similar to this one, was done by ss taking pictures of graffiti and connecting them into an animated story. 

- Technology: The technological devices used here were Movie Maker to create a slideshow, digital cameras to take pictures of graffiti and Zimmer Twins (www.zimmertwins.com) to create animated cartoons (for A Midsummer Night's Dream).

SAMR model:
At the level of  "substitution", this school had been able to integrate technology to create tasks that were inconceivable before, so this lead to the second level, "modification" for tasks were redesigned because of using technology. "Augmentation" was also accomplished for technology was the tool to perform the different tasks. And "substitution" also took place here for technology substituted ordinary ways of performing tasks.