ABSTRACT
A collaborative research approach recognises the importance of community-engaged learning and finds different ways to incorporate the multiple perspectives of teachers, students, parents and community members Digital storytelling can be viewed as deeply rooted in collaborative processes and seen as a user-generated media practice. A multimodal perspective is integral to the research approach exploring innovative ways to make language learning matter. In framing the multimodal dimension of the project, one has to be very aware of the need to look at how digital making could develop and support personal efficacy, expertise and the place of critical, social and political understanding within such a framework. A WordPress website was produced for the Critical Connections project and used to house the multilingual digital stories and resources created. The integration of all stages of pre-production, production, post-production of Multilingual Digital Storytelling into data analysis created nuanced, powerful research findings and a much clearer understanding of how to open up space for meaningful language learning.
