Immersive Storytelling: Virtual Reality as a Cross-Disciplinary Digital Storytelling Tool

Background And Theoretical Perspective

Multiliteracies, also called multiple literacies, involve visual and audio modes of communication represented through print, photos, videos, or graphs (New London Group, 1996; Kress, 2003). The term multiliteracy was developed by a group of literacy researchers who challenged the static view of literacy as primarily text based. These researchers promoted the idea that literacies are and should be plural. According to the researchers, known as the New London Group (NLG) (1996), “multi” refers to a wide range of literacies valued by cultures and social groups, as well as literacies within professional communities and disciplines. “Multi” also refers to multimodality, or the idea that communication occurs in many ways, or modes. The world is multimodal, and stories are multimodal. Therefore, this chapter about digital storytelling is grounded in a multiliteracies theoretical perspective.

In early times, entertainment was provided by orators and storytellers. These storytellers may have enhanced their messages through the use of gestures. Depending on the culture, stories were conveyed through various modes of communication, like art, drama, songs, gestures, and dance. The development of written language enabled stories to be recorded in a more permanent manner, and the invention of the printing press brought the mass-production of books and pamphlets. Distribution of the written forms of literacy changed the ways people could communicate (Lisenbee, Pilgrim, & Vasinda, 2020).

In the 21st-century, storytelling continues to occur through various modes of communication, but technology has significantly impacted the ways stories are delivered. The written and spoken story may be enhanced through the use of digital tools. For example, the use of technology applications like Puppet Pals or iMovie may enable a storyteller to enhance their message using entertaining visuals. Digital tools such as social media outlets and podcasts provide platforms for news stories. The application of digital tools to communicate has expanded notions of what it means to be literate, and to “become fully literate in today’s world, students must become proficient in the literacies of the 21st century technologies” (International Reading Association, 2009, para. 1). The transition from paper-based to screen-based communication requires new skills (Lisenbee, et al., 2020). Transliteracy is a term that describes these skills, referring to the literacy as the ability to read, write, and interact across a range of platforms, tools, and media (Vacca, et al., 2018). Transliteracy, which is cross-disciplinary in nature, reflects the transition and transformation from one mode of literacy to another.

The U.S. Department of Education supports the use of digital learning tools and transliteracy practices. The National Education Technology Plan (2017) reported that digital tools offer more flexibility and learning supports than traditional tools (U.S. Department of Education, 2017). In other words, digital tools make it possible to modify content by raising or lowering the complexity level of a task. Digital stories, the topic of this book, provide ways to leverage technology to promote both differentiated instruction to meet the needs of all learners and innovation to align with real-world tasks. The use of digital, computer-based tools to tell a story or to share a message is called digital storytelling.