Young Children's Collaborative Multimodal Story(Re)Telling on iPads

• In Event: iPad Apps and Early Literacy Development

Abstract

Multimodal composing using multiple modes of communication—e.g., drawings, print, oral language, bodily movement (Rowe et al., 2014; Wohlwend, 2011)— is important in an increasingly digital world (Miller & McVee, 2012). It aligns well with young children's natural ways of combining and moving between sign systems (Rowe et al., 2014; Kress, 2010). However, we have limited understanding about how young children construct multimodal stories with their peers to inform practices that develop students’ digital composition. Thus, we investigated children’s collaborative story-(re)telling of digital stories they read with partners using Doodlecast on iPads to answer three questions: (1) What kind of stories do children author together? (2) How do children use multimodal resources to (re)tell the stories? and (3) How do partners support each other’s multimodal story-(re)telling?

This study is informed by the “liminal blends” framework (Enyedy, Danish, & DeLiema, 2015). Lamination highlights that communication builds up layers of semiotic fields and allows us to examine how talk, body movements, and physical recourse create and modify the conceptual blend (i.e., learning). In our study we tried to understand how children decided to represent the stories on the screen. “Liminal blends” emphasizes that learning takes places across the mental, embodied and external spaces of the setting and is materially anchored, and socially distributed.

Twenty-five kindergarteners with diverse backgrounds read an iPad app book with a partner and then retold the story using Doodlecast once a week over four weeks (about 30 minutes). Data sources included 41 video-recorded buddy-reading and Doodlecast sessions. Emergent coding and constant comparison (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) were used to analyze multiple data sources to identify codes and themes.

The findings revealed two general types of story-retelling—literal and interpretative. For example, Tara and Jasper tried to follow the original story verbatim (literal) while Leah tried to provide interpretation of the reasons why the Hippopotamus did not want to join the hog and the frog—e.g., “he is too big” (interpretative). These two approaches were associated with different interpretations of the teachers’ instructions. While the literal approach seemed to emphasize “tell THE story”, the interpretative one valued “using your own words.”

We also found that the interpretive story-telling pairs used a wider range of resources while composing their stories (colors/lines of drawing functions of Doodlecast app, rich linguistic discussion with their partner, animated facial expressions and meaningful body movements) compared to literal story-retelling pairs. More importantly, the interpretation story-telling pairs were able to laminate these different kinds of material, cultural, and social resources into a successful “conceptual blend” (Enyedy, Danish, & DeLiema, 2015), thus achieved higher level of thinking and learning. Consistent with our existing research about social dynamics of the partners (Authors, 2015a; Authors, 2015b), the interpretative approach was associated with more collaborative interactions and the literal approach was associated with parallel interactions (i.e., each child takes a turn without much input from the partner). These findings suggest ways to help children develop more interpretive ways of multimodal story-(re)telling.

Authors

• X. Christine Wang, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Tanya M. Christ

• Kathryn J Andrews, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Chihiro Aoki, University at Buffalo - SUNY