Supervisor: Tharrenos Bratitsis

Title: Designing and implementing a program of digital storytelling activities in kindergarten: Exploring teachers’ and students’ experiences.

Three-member advisory comitee:

1) Tharrenos Bratitsis
2) Sofia Avgitidou
3) Dimitrios Gouskos

Abstract

Digital storytelling is an innovative pedagogical approach that has the potential to improve students’ the learning outcomes and enhance the development of 21st century skills. Although kindergarten teachers include digital storytelling in their teaching practices, research has shown that the majority has incomplete or vague views and knowledge.

With this in mind, the researcher designed a 5-month training course which was attended by 11 kindergarten teachers. The participants explored the theoretical framework and the methodology of digital storytelling, and developed a number of teaching practices in the classroom. The University Of Western Macedonia’s (UOWM) open e-class was used to create an online learning environment where teachers would have the opportunity to communicate and interact with each other and the researcher. This dissertation has a twofold purpose: a) to explore the beliefs and experiences of kindergarten teachers and their students regarding the design, implementation and evaluation of digital storytelling activities and b) to assess the extent to which the training course supported kindergarten teachers to use digital storytelling. Data collection came from five sources: a) semi-structured teachers’ interviews, b) analysis of their records, c) classroom audio recordings, d) digital stories, and e) researcher’s records.