Spinning Yarns Around the Digital Fire: Storytelling and Dialogue Among Youth on the Internet

From the Introduction

"Storytelling and dialogue is a part of every child's life. From bedtime chronicles exploring the misadventures of fantastical creatures to the beginning mumblings of a toddler trying to explain her day, storytelling introduces children to the initial stages of communication and literacy, as well creating a bridge between the physical world and an imaginative one.

Stories help children and adults to share experiences and feelings in an engaging and entertaining way. As Stephen Denning explains: "Stories are immediate and unique. Storytelling brings people together in a common perspective, and stretches everyone's capacity to empathize with others and share experience". The advantages of this type of narrative permeate our culture, creating social practices and human relations that help constitute reality, yet its role in the education and learning process of our children is especially important.

Paulo Freire's notions of "dialogue" in education insist on breaking the "contradiction" of the teacher–student relationship. In his "banking" concept of education, merely allowing students to "receive, file and store deposits" rather than engaging them in ways where they can define their own problems and solutions, encourages "passivity of the oppressed". For Freire, dialogue remains the catalyst in promoting educators and students to cooperate in ways that transform the world.

One of the needs addressed by constructivist perspectives in learning regards teaching students how to "work together to solve problems through group–based, cooperative learning activities". Collaborative and group–based activities can promote prosocial behavior, or "positive social interaction skills such as cooperation, sharing, kindness, helping, showing affection and verbalizing feelings".

This increasing awareness of the importance of communities in learning environments includes ways to use computers and technology in order to encourage collaboration. In what ways can digital technologies (in particular the Internet) add new dimensions to dialogue, storytelling, or collaboration?

This paper hypothesizes that online forums and virtual communities, including message boards, Weblogs and instant messaging software (IM), allow children important spaces to share ideas and feelings, discuss issues and projects, ask and answer each other's questions, and promote a prosocial spirit.

In order to validate this hypothesis, this paper will explore the importance of dialogue, storytelling and collaboration in children's learning, followed by examples of digital technologies that support them. First, this paper will look at early literacy and digital fluency. Next, it will investigate peer collaboration and prosocial behavior. Third, it will deal with the importance of empowering children's voices. Finally, this paper will demonstrate examples of message boards, Weblogs and IMs that sustain these concepts..."

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