Building 21st. Century literacies through digital animated storytelling

This paper will present the preliminary findings from a R&D project on developing 21st. Century literacies in a digital Storylab at a public library, doing digital animated storytelling, in collaboration with municipal schools. It will explore the implications for the approach to digital story-based learning for learner’s engagement, motivation and multimodal learning in a mixed methods study based on surveys, interviews and observations. The key literacy skills needed for 21st. Century learners have shifted from a predominant focus on verbal text towards multimodal literacies, that combine the visual, auditory and verbal with a fluency with digital tools. There is an interest to teach multimodal literacy in open schooling, while bridging informal and formal learning in hybrid environments, that is involving collaboration with libraries and museums. Designs for multimodal learning with animation may have implications for the design of engaging learning environments.