Promoting students’ multiliteracy, multimodal, and global citizenship skills in the second language classroom through designing a digital city tour on izi.TRAVEL

Abstract

There is now wide recognition that for language students to be able to communicate in today’s globalised world, they need to be engaged in a variety of multiliteracy and multimodal practices that transform them in creators of meaning. Digital storytelling is one of such practices. It combines the power of narration with that of technology and allows students to expand their language and digital literacy skills while also helping them develop their own voices. In our study, two groups of elementary and intermediate university students of Italian as a second language were involved in a two-part project aimed at the composition of a digital story on the city of Venice. In the first part, students participated in both classroom and museum activities, which encouraged them to practice their skills in Italian as well as to learn about the Venetian cultural heritage. In the second part, students were guided to craft their own digital tours of the city of Venice using the izi.TRAVEL platform. The multimodal analysis of the two tours shows that creating digital stories based on students’ understanding and interpretation of cultural heritage promoted both their narration and mediation skills in the second language and their role as global citizens.