Storytelling – EDU: Educational - Digital – Unlimited?

Abstract

It is undisputed that storytelling is one of the oldest practices of humankind and has been ever-present in social life. This traditional role of narrating has gained new and unexpected topicality in the last decades in various fields and in many respects. Today, 'digital storytelling' is widely established as an umbrella term. Related phenomena are being discussed in terms of mediation, mediatization, multimodal forms of narration and others.

As to educational issues, the situation seems to be rather ambivalent. On the one hand, digital storytelling offers enhancements of learning experiences, chances for meaningful learning and democratization, and also for bridging formal and informal contexts. On the other hand, we can observe a persistent adherence of educational institutions to "writing" as the dominant medium in many countries, thus negating media ecologies and the multimedia environment. Especially regular schools are widely conceptualized as "monomedial provinces" (J. Böhme), thus being justified as "literal countercultures" in which it is imperative to defend literality as the foremost achievement in the process of civilization, whereas otherwise calls for "new literacies" cannot go unnoticed.

The contribution reflects on various understandings of 'digital storytelling' and underestimated dimensions in this regard. It aims at pointing out conceptual problems, and it sounds out limitations of the utilization of digital storytelling in educational contexts.