Digital Storytelling
Module Reflection
1. Team Collaboration and Workflow Challenges
2. Experimenting with AI Tools and Design Choices
3. The benefits of Visual Storytelling
4. Personal Growth Through Presentation
In this digital storytelling project, my main role was to generate images and design the layout of the pages, while Eunice came up with the initial story outline. Together, we expanded the storyline based on the Story Mountain structure during our discussions. We mostly communicated through messaging apps, which sometimes caused delays due to time differences in our schedules. Therefore, we often ended up submitting the project right before the deadline. To improve efficiency, we tried to divide our tasks during class time, which helped us work more effectively as a team.
We used ChatGPT to generate images, but despite using the same prompts, the images often looked different depending on the device or account. Since my friend had access to the paid version of ChatGPT, I took responsibility for image generation. Even with the paid version, each prompt could still produce images with different styles or sizes, so I created a basic prompt template and adjusted it according to the type of image I needed. For the cover image, I used Instagram because I liked its font style and was more familiar for me because I use it everyday.
My favorite part of our creative process was the illustration style. I believe the warm, soft picture style could appeal to young children and make the story more engaging. Moreover, because our main target audience is 8–12 years old students, so the prompt I use in ChatGPT is “Generate the image in Ghibli style (which is a famous Japanese animate company).” I believe that the pictures produced can be accepted by the public, just like the success of Studio Ghibli. Second, we also used Henry’s facial expressions and the contrasting backgrounds to reflect the mood of different scenes. This attention to visual detail was something I really enjoyed and immersed in the storytelling experience.
The most meaningful part of this project for me was presenting our story in front of the class. I’m not a very outgoing person, so I spent a lot of time preparing for the presentation. Although I didn’t perform perfectly, the experience made me feel like a real teacher introducing teaching materials to my students.
Through this project, I realized that being a good language teacher isn’t just about teaching vocabulary or grammar, and it’s also about designing materials that make students interested in learning English. This experience was unforgettable and has helped me in preparing for graduate school.