Ten Minutes of Connecting: Day 28 – Digital Storytelling for Beginners

Why is Storytelling Important?

If the idea that storytelling is important is a new one for you, we suggest that you take your 10 minutes today, and explore some of the resources below.

The importance of storytelling has been documented on many levels.  Some of us came through a school system that de-emphasized the importance of stories, and valued the  memorization of facts.  We may need to relearn the power of stories, and how they can play a critical role in our work as educators.

Consider the breadth of the idea of storytelling on Wikipedia.

Explore the importance of storytelling in First Nations Pedagogy.

 

Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share-Alike license by Guilia Forsythe.
Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non-Commercial – Share-Alike license by Guilia Forsythe.

“When it comes to inspiring people to embrace some strange new change in behaviour, storytelling isn’t just better than the other tools. It’s the only thing that works.”

Steve Denning

Still not convinced?

Check out some of these TED Talks on the topic of storytelling, or this article in The Guardian on the Importance of Storytelling in the Digital Age.

 

Why Is It Important to Tell Our Stories?

Taken from a post by Stephen Hurley. Click the image for the link to the post.
Taken from a post by Stephen Hurley. Click the image for the link to the post.

If we don’t tell our stories, someone else will.  We are doing amazing work in education today. Who are we telling about it?

The importance of taking time to tell our stories is captured in this post by Stephen Hurley:  Telling Tales Out of School: The Stories that Emerge from the Work That We Do.  We hope you will take a few minutes to read it and consider your role in spreading the great stories of public education in Ontario.

Taken from a post by @stephen_hurley. Click the image for the link to the original post.
Taken from a post by @stephen_hurley. Click the image for the link to the original post.

 

Earlier this year, Darren Kuropatwa visited OSSEMOOC to share ideas around Digital Storytelling.  You can access his slides here.

Some of our participants shared their learning in the video below.

 

How can we begin to use digital storytelling in our classrooms?

This example from Kathy Cassidy demonstrates the power of tools available to help even early primary students share their stories.

 

From Kathy Cassidy's post on "Blogging in a Primary Classroom with only One iPad" (click on the image for the link)
From Kathy Cassidy’s post on “Blogging in a Primary Classroom with only One iPad” (click on the image for the link)

 

How can you find out more about Digital Storytelling?  Here is a great starting point: 50+ Web Ways to Tell a Story (by Alan Levine – @cogdog)

What digital storytelling resources or examples do you have to share?

Further Resources:

Digital Storytelling Tools

Digital Storytelling Resources (Dr. Alec Couros – @courosa) -> further resources here as well

Storytelling (David Jakes – @djakes)

Kathy Schrock's Guide to Digital Storytelling (click on the image for the link to the guide)
Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Digital Storytelling (click on the image for the link to the guide)
Advertisement

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s