Digital Storytelling: Activating Communicative, Narrative and Digital Competences in Initial Teacher Training

Abstract

Digital storytelling is a narrative technique with a great educational potential, as it adopts creative formula, which integrates multi-format information to communicate ideas, using a technological support. This research shows the level of communicative, narrative and digital competence linked to the creation of digital storytelling in digital environments reached by students of the Degree of Primary School Teacher (N=143). With this purpose, a rubric composed of 28 indicators was used, 12 indicators referred to the communicative competence (written and oral communication), 6 to the narrative and 10 to the digital. The results demonstrate that most students have a great ability using the computer application, whilst almost a third shows a medium-low level of communicative competence. Some difficulties were detected in screenplay creation and its adaptation to the linguistic register previously chosen -poor vocabulary and inaccurate punctuation-, as well as pronunciation’s defects when saying the dialogues, as some of them were not able to transmit expressiveness to the story. Regarding narrative competence, only a 40% are original in resolving the plot and creating characters. Certainly, this type of experiences provides a motivating scene to develop narrative and creative skills in digital environments and offers numerous opportunities for future teachers’ training.