Surviving the impossible: Studying students' constructions of digital stories on World War II

The article reports on a case study detailing a school project at a lower secondary school in Norway, for which students created personal digital stories on the topic of World War II. In contrast to previous research, this study provides a detailed account of how digital storytelling is enacted in an educational practice. A sociocultural and dialogical perspective on learning and meaning-making is employed as an analytical framework. The findings suggest that digital storytelling might contribute to an educational practice that expands students' access to various resources for working on a curricular topic. However, the results show that the potential of digital storytelling has to be considered in light of several issues. Such issues include the degree to which teachers manage to create a balance between institutional demands and student agency, and the manner in which teachers enable students' interpretations of this genre in terms of working on content creation and developing appropriate tools for this purpose. Additional issues include how teachers use student-composed content to expand students reflection upon the topic addressed in the digital story, and how educators develop an understanding of how the diverse interests of the students influence the creation of such a product.