Emotions, digital tools and public histories: Digital storytelling using windows movie maker in the history tertiary classroom

Abstract

In the teaching of ‘Digital Histories’ for university students, we focus on a range of digital practices for making history. The teaching themes and content and the assessment tasks build towards knowledge of digital formats for history education based in experiential learning. The assignments include a digital storytelling workshop which results in the submission of a 3-minute digital story created using Windows Movie Maker. Students respond to this in different ways. This article examines the value of digital storytelling to history teaching and learning in the tertiary history environment. We show that tertiary history students might find new modes of conducting and presenting historical knowledge by using new technologies, as well as adapting ‘traditional’ modes of historical research and writing for the new format. In particular, we evaluate the potential of digital storytelling in the classroom from three angles: first, as a way of building group rapport through emotional exchange and sharing ideas; second, as a way of learning a new digital tool for classroom learning; and third, as a site for making public histories. This process and our research suggests new ways of ‘doing history’ to other academics teaching history in order to enrich and encourage the discipline among an increasingly changing student cohort and in an interdisciplinary context.