Harnessing the Potential of Storytelling and Mobile Technology in Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Case Study in Early Childhood Education in Sustainability

"Digital storytelling can offer multiple benefits both to students and teachers, and new media provide multimodal ways to produce, transmit and communicate stories. In parallel, the need to engage preschool children with the creative use of technology emerges in order to address concerns that arise from the modern way of life and the need to safeguard intangible cultural heritage and to communicate its value for sustainable development. The current study presents an example of digital storytelling utilization in a preschool class to raise awareness on sustainability issues. A linear digital storytelling was created, representing a local myth about watermills, then an educational intervention was conducted, where the myth’s digital representation was used as an educational tool to raise awareness on local cultural heritage and sustainability issues and also as an example to inspire and guide teachers and students to create their own stories. Results showed that the digital storytelling was an effective educational tool to the acquisition of new knowledge and the motivation of preschool children’s interest about the cultural asset of watermills and that the production of digital storytelling is feasible in the class context. These findings prove the potential of digital storytelling and mobile technology by using low-cost devices and applying simple techniques in preschool education."

"The current study showed that digital storytelling was an attractive and effective educational tool that gained the interest of children and its value was appreciated by the class educators. It motivated the class to pursue new creative learning goals since it led children to create their own stories, activating their imagination and interest. Finally, it offered the teachers valuable feedback as they said that they were inspired to plan new teaching activities based on digital storytelling." (Tzima et al. 2020: 15) "In accordance with the findings of other studies, the educational intervention offered valuable affective, cognitive and conceptual outcomes [4] and promoted important pedagogical attributes such as collaborative learning, creativity and innovation, multiple representations, motivation, cognitive effort, feedback, etc. [31–33]. It also enhanced various skills including visual literacy, technology literacy and information literacy [43] and especially the characteristics of creativity and imagination. Finally, it offered knowledge and experience, elements that are considered as the raw material of creativity and as one of the basic characteristics of the citizen of the 21st century [2]." (Tzima et al. 2020: 17) "In addition, the research showed the students’ positive attitude towards a cultural asset unknown to them and towards the digital representation of an unknown myth, as well as their sensitivity to the problems of hunger and poverty as reflected in one of their stories." (Tzima et al. 2020: 17) "The current study demonstrates the potential of digital storytelling and mobile devices in preschool education. The results of the study indicate that the applied methodology can be an example of proper and effective use of mobile technology in education." (Tzima et al. 2020: 18)