Title: Kindergarten children's motivation and collaboration being triggered via computers while creating digital stories: a case study

Authors: Tharrenos Bratitsis; Triantafyllos Kotopoulos; Kyriaki Mandila

Addresses: Early Childhood Education Department, University of Western Macedonia, 3rd km National Road Florinas – Nikis, Florina 53100, Greece ' Early Childhood Education Department, University of Western Macedonia, 3rd km National Road Florinas – Nikis, Florina 53100, Greece ' Early Childhood Education Department, University of Western Macedonia, 3rd km National Road Florinas – Nikis, Florina 53100, Greece

Abstract: Fairy tales exist for centuries and have intrigued educators who have been utilising their 'magical power of affection', especially when teaching young children. In the current paper, story creation is examined with the perspective of the children as authors. A Web 2.0 service, Tikatok, which provides several facilities for creating stories in a book-like format, is utilised in order to examine the effect of the digital medium (ICTs) in the story creation process by the children. Eight kindergarten students divided into four pairs, worked in different settings. The results show an impressive effect of the computer on children's motivation, as well as several qualitative aspects of story creation.

Keywords: digital story telling; Web 2.0; kindergarten children; child motivation; collaboration; digital stories; learning; child authors; story creation; ICT.

DOI: 10.1504/IJKL.2012.051677

International Journal of Knowledge and Learning, 2012 Vol.8 No.3/4, pp.239 - 258

Received: 03 Apr 2012
Accepted: 17 Sep 2012
Published online: 04 Sep 2014 *

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