Harnessing the Potential of Storytelling and Mobile Technology in Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Case Study in Early Childhood Education in Sustainability

Digital storytelling can offer multiple benefits both to students and teachers, and new media provide multimodal ways to produce, transmit and communicate stories. In parallel, the need to engage preschool children with the creative use of technology emerges in order to address concerns that arise from the modern way of life and the need to safeguard intangible cultural heritage and to communicate its value for sustainable development. The current study presents an example of digital storytelling utilization in a preschool class to raise awareness on sustainability issues. A linear digital storytelling was created, representing a local myth about watermills, then an educational intervention was conducted, where the myth's digital representation was used as an educational tool to raise awareness on local cultural heritage and sustainability issues and also as an example to inspire and guide teachers and students to create their own stories. Results showed that the digital storytelling was an effective educational tool to the acquisition of new knowledge and the motivation of preschool children's interest about the cultural asset of watermills and that the production of digital storytelling is feasible in the class context. These findings prove the potential of digital storytelling and mobile technology by using low-cost devices and applying simple techniques in preschool education.