From Coleen Elmers ETC blog: The Web 2.0 tool that I chose to learn about and use for educational purposes is called Storybird. Although it states in the abstract that it is for family and friend collaboration in storytelling, I believe this will be a great adjunct to my leadership classes. This collaborative storytelling site allows you to create stories with a template that includes pictures and areas for text that you can easily share with others in a collaborative venture. When you are done you can choose to publish your storybook as either private or public. You can also view any of the other public storybooks on the same site.
For this assignment I created a short story on leaders and leadership that would work with any age group. The picture above shows you the cover to my storybook. Here is the link so that you can read my story
I believe personal stories are very powerful learning tools. I frequently use stories in class to highlight important concepts such as trust, communication, teamwork and caring. I also have students share their personal leadership stories...these have the unique capacity to create true engagement in their colleagues. Some of the greatest leaders have the distinct ability to tell inspiring stories.
From my own personal perspective, I believe that stories have the capability to connect people through lessons learned, inspiring acts displayed and creativity shared. Stories help people learn in a way that is not possible through any other format. Stories create emotional ties to the information that allow students to more easily retain it. Stories can illustrate success or failure in a way that is vivid and inspiring.
1 comments:
@Coleen - I loved your Leadership storybook. It was a great use of a small number of words that packed a lot of meaning, and the graphics you chose were great! I think this would be a good tool for potential leaders to use in identifying what skills they can lay claim to, and what they are still needing to develop. I can imagine all kinds of creative stories coming out of this.