Digital Storytelling in Early Childhood Prekindergarten Classrooms

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSr9TJQttGDuakYiWM1w-YrtZjLcnFwwT0xQw&s

Topic Introduction

In today's early childhood classrooms, literacy evolved beyond traditional print and encompasses a variety of modes, including digital and participatory formats. Young children engage with and create meaning using images, sound, movement, and technology, alongside conventional reading and wiring activities (Yuksel-Arslan et al., 2016). As a preschool educator, I am particularly interested in how digital storytelling tools can enhance children's roles as active storytellers rather than passive listeners. By integrating the concepts of new literacies, multimodal learning, and student agency, digital story-making emerges as a powerful method that enables children to design, narrate, and share their ideas through diverse forms of expression. This approach bolsters emergent literacy skills like vocabulary, narrative structure, and print awareness, and also fosters creativity, collaboration, and a sense of authorship. Thus, digital storytelling aligns with modern views of literacy as social, multimodal, and empowering, helping young learners perceive themselves as capable creators of meaning in a digital world.

Exploring digital storytelling through this lens allows me to connect theory to everyday classroom practice. In a preschool setting, literacy development happens through play, talk, and interaction, and digital tools can extend these experiences in meaningful ways. When children use apps like Book Creator or ChatterPix Kids, they are not simply engaging with technology, they are composing, sequencing, and expressing ideas across images, text, and sound (Rahiem, 2021). As the teacher, my role becomes that of a facilitator who scaffolds this process: guiding narrative development, supporting emergent literacy skills, and encouraging reflection and collaboration. By intentionally designing digital story-making experiences, I can integrate the goals of early literacy instruction such as vocabulary growth, print awareness, and narrative competence with the broader aims of new literacies and multimodal learning. This approach situates children as capable authors and creators, giving them authentic opportunities to build both foundational and future-oriented literacy skills.

https://www.icevonline.com/hubfs/Technology_Applications.webp

Interest and Rationale: Linking New Literacies, Multimodal, & Agency

In a preschool classroom, our activities often revolve around storytelling, playing with language, engaging with books, and building early literacy skills as young learners. I'm particularly fascinated by how digital storytelling allows young children to create their own stories, rather than just consuming them. This aligns with my interest in new literacies, multimodal learning, and empowering children's choices.

By using digital story apps like Book Creator and ChatterPix Kids, children can drag pictures, record their voices, add text, include images, and rearrange scenes, making the story truly their own. This is significant because:

• It enhances narrative skills: Children learn to organize ideas, select characters and settings, sequence events, and revise their stories.
• It supports early literacy: They engage in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and working with multiple modes such as images, voice, and text.
• It encourages multimodal literacy: In today's digital world, children need to be able to navigate and create using various modes, not just print.
• It fosters creativity and decision-making: Children become co-creators, making choices, using their voices, sharing, and reflecting.
• It transforms the traditional "listen to the teacher/author" model, allowing young learners to be both consumers and creators of stories.

As an educator working with PreK children, this topic is directly related to how I can develop practical classroom applications: selecting suitable apps, supporting children's storytelling, aligning with emergent literacy goals, and integrating play-based, multimodal routines. 

https://karnavatiuniversity.edu.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/The-Power-of-Storytelling-in-Digital-Marketing.webp 

Practical applications in my work as an educator

Exploring the topic of digital storytelling and its link to new literacies, multimodal learning, and agency can profoundly change my classroom practice. It enables me to create literacy experiences that are engaging, imaginative, and aligned with the digital environment children are familiar with. By examining this subject more thoroughly, I can carefully choose age-appropriate apps and digital tools, design projects that incorporate play and storytelling, and support children's learning to enhance their narrative skills, vocabulary, and print awareness (Kervin & Mantei, 2016). Understanding multimodal literacy better also allows me to help children purposefully combine text, image, and sound, encouraging both creativity and critical thinking. Furthermore, this exploration can shape how I encourage children's agency, providing them with real opportunities to make decisions, work with peers, and share their stories with genuine audiences. Engaging in ongoing research and reflection in this area ensures that my teaching methods stay evidence-based and adaptable to the changing nature of literacy in early childhood education.

Here are some ways delving deeply into this topic could benefit my practice:

• Selecting and structuring digital story-making projects: For example, using Book Creator with the class: children might photograph their own creations i.e., blocks, art, play scenes, record their voice, telling the story, add text captions. I can scaffold narrative structure, beginning, end, sound/text correspondence, and allow children to share with peers or family.
• Supporting emergent literacy through story-creation: Use the app to invite children to write, or voice record, their own "mini-book" i.e., "My Weekend Adventure", or "If I Were A Superhero". Then support print awareness, child holding device, seeing text + their image + their voice, vocabulary development, retelling (O'Byrne et al., 2018).
• Facilitating multimodal literacy: Highlight how images, audio, video, text all become a part of the story. Encourage children to think: "How will my pictures show the action? What voice will I use? What text will help my reader understand?" This aligns with new literacies beyond print alone.
• Encouraging agency and sharing: Children can publish/share their digital stories i.e., via classroom website, printed PDF, parent-email, which gives them purpose and an audience. This can boost motivation and sense of ownership.
• Scaffolding peer collaboration and reflection: Children can review each other's digital stories, ask questions, add voice comments, revise. They are not just passive consumers, but co-creators. This supports social interaction around texts and digital media (Maureen et al., 2020).
• Aligning with emergent literacy goals: I can link the digital story activity to targets like: vocabulary growth, narrative retell i.e. begin/middle/ end, print knowledge (recognizing letters/words), phonological awareness (recording voice, hearing sound segments), and writing typing/captioning). Also like to multimodal literacies, i.e., using drawing/picture, audio narration, digital, and device skills.
• Professional reflection and research-informed practice: By reviewing research in this area, I can better design effective tasks, not just novelty projects, and understand how to scaffold child children's capacities, choose appropriately designed apps, and avoid pitfalls i.e., purely passive digital "reading" apps vs. active creation (Kervin & Mantei, 2016). I can evaluate how children's narrative and literacy skills change over time when engaged in digital storytelling.

Annotated Bibliography

Kervin, L., & Mantei, J. (2016). Digital storytelling: Capturing children’s participation in preschool activities. Issues in Educational Research, 26(2), 225–240.  

Summary: Kervin and Mantei (2016) explore the use of digital storytelling to increase and enhance young children's engagement in preschool activities. By conducting qualitative classroom observations, they examine how digital tools like cameras, tablets, and audio recorders enable children to convey their thoughts, reflect on their learning, and share personal stories. The study emphasizes how digital storytelling promotes children's agency, communication, and collaboration while also supporting literacy and multimodal learning. The authors discuss the educational implications for teachers, highlighting the need to create learning environments that appreciate children's voices and thoughtfully integrate technology.

Relevance: This article is highly relevant to digital storytelling in early childhood settings as it illustrates how digital media can empower young learners to actively document and interpret their experiences. The research provides evidence that digital storytelling aids both cognitive and social development, making it a significant educational tool. Additionally, its focus on children's participation and voice aligns with modern early childhood education practices that emphasize child-centered, inquiry-based learning.

Maureen, I. Y., van der Meij, H., & de Jong, T. (2020). Enhancing storytelling activities to support early (digital) literacy development in early childhood education. International Journal of Early Childhood, 52(1), 55–76. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13158-020-00263-7  

Summary: The study involved 62 children aged 5 to 6 years from two kindergartens, divided into three groups: (a) standard literacy activities, (b) storytelling with play-based literacy activities, and (c) digital storytelling with play-based activities. Over six weeks, the researchers assessed early literacy and digital literacy. The findings revealed that both the storytelling and digital storytelling groups experienced significant improvements in literacy and digital literacy skills compared to the control group. The digital storytelling group, in particular, demonstrated how incorporating digital tools in storytelling can enhance literacy development (Maureen et al., 2020).

Relevance: This study provides empirical evidence that digital storytelling can boost literacy and digital literacy in early childhood education. It is highly pertinent to the focus on emerging literacy/narrative and supports your argument regarding multimodal and digital literacies. Additionally, it offers insights into how structured storytelling activities can be designed to actively engage children, fostering both creativity and agency while promoting meaningful learning outcomes.

O’Byrne, W. I., Houser, K., Stone, R., & White, M. (2018). Digital storytelling in early childhood: Student illustrations shaping social interactions. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1800. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01800

Summary: In this U.S. early childhood classroom study, the authors tested an instructional model called “Emerging Digital Storytellers,” where young children used digital tools to create their own stories (illustrations + voice + narrative). They found that children developed enhanced communication skills, were better able to organize ideas, ask questions, express opinions, and construct narratives in interaction with peers and computers. The study also emphasizes how digital storytelling supports emergent literacy practices (e.g., early writing, vocabulary, oral language) and social interaction (O'Byrne et al., 2018).

Relevance: This is a strong fit for my topic: early childhood, digital storytelling, emergent literacy/narrative skills, children as creators. It helps support your argument about agency and narrative skill development. Furthermore, it offers concrete evidence showing how digital tools can boost young children's involvement, creativity, and ownership in storytelling, strengthening the link between multimodal expression and early literacy development.

Rahiem, M. D. H. (2021). Storytelling in early childhood education: Time to go digital. International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy, 15(1), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40723-021-00081-x

Summary: This qualitative study by Rahiem (2021) investigated a storytelling-art-science club in early childhood education, focusing on teachers' use of digital storytelling and their reasons for doing so. Data collected from teacher interviews and observations (involving 35 and 37 children sessions) revealed that digital storytelling enhanced the storytelling experience by making it more entertaining, captivating, interactive, communicative, and "theatrical." The study underscores children's attraction to digital technology in storytelling while highlighting the necessity for teacher digital literacy and adequate ICT infrastructure.

Relevance: This article supports the "why digital storytelling" section of your blog by providing evidence that digital storytelling is motivating and engaging for children. It also addresses practical considerations for teachers, connecting to your focus on educator applications. This article bolsters the "why digital storytelling" segment of your blog by offering evidence that digital storytelling is both motivating and engaging for children. It also discusses practical considerations for teachers, aligning with your focus on educator applications. Moreover, it emphasizes how the careful incorporation of digital storytelling can improve literacy outcomes and empower students, underscoring the significance of intentional, well-structured digital practices in early childhood classrooms.

Yuksel-Arslan, P., Yildirim, S., & Robin, B. R. (2016). A phenomenological study: Teachers’ experiences of using digital storytelling in early childhood education. Educational Studies, 42(5), 427–445. https://doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2016.1195717

Summary: Yüksel-Arslan, Yildirim, and Robin (2016) carried out a phenomenological study to investigate the experiences of early childhood education (ECE) teachers in integrating digital storytelling in their classrooms. The research focused on five kindergarten classes, each with around 20 students and a teacher. Following a workshop on digital storytelling, teachers participated in comprehensive phenomenological interviews, observations, and focus group discussions. The study aimed to explore how teachers implemented digital storytelling and the challenges and successes they experienced. The findings emphasized that focusing on specific aspects could support teachers, parents, educational researchers, and policymakers in effectively using technological tools in young children's learning environments.

Relevance: This study is highly relevant to your focus on digital storytelling in early childhood classrooms, as it provides empirical evidence of how early childhood education (ECE) teachers have utilized digital storytelling to enhance learning. The research highlights the potential of digital storytelling in supporting the development of emergent literacy and narrative skills. By exploring teachers' experiences, the study offers insights into the practical applications and challenges of integrating digital storytelling, aligning with your interest in multimodal literacy and children's agency. Additionally, the findings emphasize the importance of teacher preparation and support in effectively incorporating digital storytelling into early childhood education. 

References

Kervin, L., & Mantei, J. (2016). Digital storytelling: Capturing children’s participation in preschool activities. Issues in Educational Research, 26(2), 225–240.

Maureen, I. Y., van der Meij, H., & de Jong, T. (2020). Enhancing storytelling activities to support early (digital) literacy development in early childhood education. International Journal of Early Childhood, 52(1), 55–76. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13158-020-00263-7  

O’Byrne, W. I., Houser, K., Stone, R., & White, M. (2018). Digital storytelling in early childhood: Student illustrations shaping social interactions. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1800. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01800

Rahiem, M. D. H. (2021). Storytelling in early childhood education: Time to go digital. International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy, 15(1), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40723-021-00081-x

Yuksel-Arslan, P., Yildirim, S., & Robin, B. R. (2016). A phenomenological study: Teachers’ experiences of using digital storytelling in early childhood education. Educational Studies, 42(5), 427–445. https://doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2016.1195717