Digital storytelling in art education at elementary school

In my Master’s thesis I deal with the method of digital storytelling in art classes. A digital story which is placed in the context of teaching is a special form of multimedia material in which static and dynamic pictures, written and spoken texts are all intertwined. The theoretical part I write of motivation in teaching art at school. I explain what is learnt by the cognitive theory of multimedia teaching and describe the condition when information technology is used in Slovenia. Furthermore, I describe how to create a digital story that is clear to the students and illustrates art concepts and procedures when teaching art. What is more, in the empirical part I describe my activity research which I have performed at my art lessons in three different schools. In the seventh grade class I dealt with the problem of composition in a visual work of art in the field of drawing. In the eighth grade I dealt with the visual problem of the amount of colour contrast in the field of painting. Among students of two seventh and two eighth grades, which were experimental groups, I used the teaching method of digital storytelling. In the other two seventh and eighth grades, which were control groups, I carried out the same teaching contents by the classical teaching method. Therefore, all the students taking part in the research created an art product and the following week took a written examination. On the basis of the results I have been able to conclude whether the students have achieved higher taxonomy levels of knowledge of art concepts due to the use of digital storytelling method in comparison to the students who were taught by the classical teaching method. To conclude, after the tasks were completed three of art teachers assessed the students’ knowledge of art concepts in their art products and tests. They evaluated them according to the predefined criteria of evaluation derived from the understanding of art concepts in their art products. Afterwards the students of the experimental group were given a questionnaire, and so they were able to express their opinion on the use of the teaching method of digital storytelling. In the last part of my thesis I present my own examples of good school practice of information technology used in art education