ABSTRACT
This chapter sets Multilingual Digital Storytelling (MDST) within the context of current understandings of multiliteracies. It talks about the power of stories for language learning and cultural exploration and how stories, images, rhymes and melodies are at the core of our cultural identity. Learning within English is a highly contested political arena and in looking at how policy and pedagogy have developed in relation to English and English as an additional language there continues to be worrying disregard for multilingualism and learners' repertoire of languages and variety of dialects. Multiliteracies pedagogy builds on the cultural and linguistic capital that pupils bring to schools and recognises the role of new technologies in developing pupils' language. There is a growing body of evidence showing how digital storytelling can play an important role in developing and extending literacy practices. Multisensory approaches towards literacy fit with the creative and aesthetic, as well as technical dimensions to digital storytelling.
