This Is My Story: Preservice English Teachers Create Welcome Videos to Navigate the Places and Spaces of Their Literacy Lives

This article describes a recent collective case study of English language arts methods students at a large university in the southwestern United States who created literacy-based welcome videos addressed to future students. By crafting “This is my Story” videos, preservice teachers practiced technology implementation with traditionally print-based approaches, integrating multimodal media text creation and biographical narration. Digital autobiographies support preservice teachers’ ability to interrogate their own contexts in ways that prepare them to facilitate diverse literacy communities in which all voices have value. Findings suggest that purposeful applications of technology can help English teacher candidates cultivate literacy identities and hone digital literacies as part of their teacher preparation.