DiSEL21 Ltd was created in partnership with Helsinki University in the autumn of 2015. It’s solution, EdVisto, builds on years of practical research seeking to develop modern teaching and learning methods for the new generation. The result was born by combining the most ancient teaching method, storytelling, with the modern technology for consuming information, mobile videos. EdVisto is a web-based platform optimized for mobile devices that transforms key elements from global sharing and social platforms like YouTube and Facebook into a powerful learning method designed for the education sector. EdVisto focuses on the learning process that occurs during students’ creation of video stories in collaboration with others. Teachers take on the facilitator role and let students’ creativity and group dynamic be at the center, while collaboration is encouraged both locally and internationally through specific features that connect teachers and students across schools and countries. EdVisto combines the most ancient teaching method of storytelling with modern video and social sharing technology for a powerful learning solution. Backed by years of pedagogical research on how to excite, engage and motivate the new generation of students, video storytelling as a teaching and learning method was developed together with teachers and students in the forefront of the 21st century education.
As an Educational Technology Designer (ETD), DiSEL21 offers solutions for collaborative video making, where the learners build a common narrative and understanding of a work-life or societal phenomenon and share it to others. The video storytelling is a discovery process that promotes conceptual mastery of the studied phenomenon. The tools for video making will entail simple editing and hyper-video tools that are easy to uptake. By hyper-video, we mean a displayed video stream that contains embedded, user-clickable anchors that allow navigation between video and other hypermedia elements. The video content can be shared in an online community of learners, which can also be used for the collaborative teamwork for making the video.