Abstract

Digital stories are widely being used in the classroom as a part of teaching methodology among low proficient learners to improve language skills. This paper represents the findings of a project which projects digital stories as a pathway to improve cognitive skills among students with low level thinking. A digital story is a combination of a wide range of visuals such as pictures, videos, images with an audio which brings enthusiasm in students to gain the knowledge of language and other subjects. This project is a longitudinal study to investigate the association between digital storytelling and cognitive skills to understand the effects of digital storytelling on the brain development of learners. This research involved students with a variety of digital stories exposing with the help of technology and later on various cognitive tasks were conducted to test their brain development on students in Hyderabad on select students. It was found from observations and data collection through various tasks that the functioning of the brain of students boosts cognitive skills after being taught them with stories and students tend to be more creative and sharper. It has been found that digital storytelling brings creativity, improves critical thinking and builds self-confidence in students. It can help learners in learning the subject in depth and understand the concept and idea of the lesson and also helps to become good language communicators. Hence the findings came up with the result that digital storytelling using multimedia has a positive impact on students and it is a good teaching approach to develop memory, visual skills, creativity and cognitive skills. It also exposed them with good vocabulary and development in their communication skills.