Week #7: Storytelling

Stories have been at the center of human consciousness for a long time. People tell
stories, and the stories they tell shape who they are. People hear stories and remember
those that resonate deeply with them … Good education requires good stories. (p. 5)
-Robert Schank

This week's topic on storytelling enlightened me on how to appropriately utilize the principles of storytelling to design effective instruction.  As the quote above states, good storytelling engages learner to meaningfully interpret various experiences.  According to Jonassen & Hernandez-Serrano (2002) stories should be used:

• To convey or make meaning
• As a cultural communication tool
• To affirm commonalities or mark distinctions
• To create memories
• To frame interpretations
• To understand
• To support arguments
• To facilitate vicarious interactions
• To facilitate authentic exploration

Although our project will not be utilizing storytelling principles in our website, during class we developed a story of how our website can transform/ impact a user's life.

We were given an iPad as a possible tool. However, my teammates and I lacked knowledge in how to utilize this device so we disregarded this tool, due to the time constraints.  Instead, we had a team member narrate a story while myself and the third member acted out the story.  The storyline consisted of two girls living in a parallel world: one girl living a successful life with the help of our career website, and the other living a less successful life without the website.  Our story would have been more effective with the use of music, sound effects and captions.  Despite the lack of our technical expertise and time constraints, overall my team did a great job producing a story.

Reference: Schank, R.C. (2005). Every curriculum tells a story. Retrieved November 1, 2008, from
http://www.socraticarts.com/about/SCCwhitepaper.pdf