A Structured Inquiry into a Digital Story

Abstract

Schools have been islands isolated from mobile technologies for a long time. In Finland, schools are investing in mobile technologies with the aim of providing a tablet for each student. This trend enables classes to adopt practices where students not only use ready-made learning materials but generate content as well. This paper aims to investigate student-generated digital stories as learning artefacts through a case example from two chemistry classes in a primary school. After introducing a method of creating digital stories from a structured inquiry, the paper presents an in-depth analysis of a specific type of story, its construction and conceptual learning outcomes related to the story's topic (i.e., chemical reaction). The results indicate that storytelling based on a structured inquiry is suited for novice science learners. In the future, teaching visual communication skills and story scripting to students should be emphasised to make the stories more sophisticated.