Digitise Your Dreams the Indigenous Way

Abstract

Dreamtime stories are the Indigenous way of understanding the world. These stories gave unity and purpose to Indigenous societies in the past and are important today in maintaining their identity and culture. They are seen to be the beginning of knowledge and thus make them good artefacts for capturing learning experiences. Research has shown that the sharing of stories from experience helps student see the purpose of learning hypothetical or conceptual content (Bittel & Bettoi, 2014). As such, the key to learning would lie with the choice and design of stories to make sure their connections with real world problems and prior knowledge are prominent. A digital story strategy captures the entire enquiry process by acting as the channel for self-expression in a digital era, including students’ information fluency towards constructing knowledge based on what they have observed and reflected on, to developing the ability to apply this new knowledge to a problem later (Kervin et. al., 2014). Riesland (2005) wrote that visual literacy education will empower the twenty-first century students with the skill to survive in a dynamic and fast revolving online world as they learn to decipher hypermedia information to develop critical thinking and analytical skills.