In this module, I learned about the myriad of benefits that effective storytelling can have with regards to learning and making connections. Storytelling allows people to more well-rounded; whether you’re a writer or a reader, storytelling allows people to understand different perspectives in a multitude of situations. In the video ‘The Power of Story in Teaching’, the narrator breaks down the value of good storytelling. They describe that storytelling:

  • Creates meaning through experience
  • Holds more depth than a single example
  • Develops individuals’ creativity
  • Helps people connect the dots from theory to the real world
  • Evokes empathy

With respect to multimedia learning, it is clear how we can use storytelling to our advantage. By placing learners in situations, strengthening their intuition for story takeaways, and increasing memory retention, we maximize our ability to teach students valuable lessons in and out of the classroom. 

Experimenting with Twine

Using Twine gave me an opportunity to be creative. After learning about different storytelling techniques and methods, Twine was an excellent platform to put them to use. While understanding the interface took a bit of time, it was easy once I got the hang of it. My Twine story depicts an individual who is coming to terms with switching majors in University and exploring the different career possibilities that result from their choices. I built this story similar to that of a video-game decision tree which are akin to the nonlinear branched narratives that Twine is built to create.

Reflection Question: Describe a meaningful learning experience that started with a story that you heard. What made it impactful for you? What senses did it appeal to? Did you recognize any of the storytelling techniques reviewed this week? 

A story that I vaguely recall from high school comes to mind. Before I proceed to tell the story, I’d like to issue a small trigger warning for the sensitive content provided in the upcoming paragraphs.  All of the students had gathered in the gymnasium to hear from a guest speaker to highlight the dangers of impaired driving. For the sake of clarity and to prevent repetition, let’s call this guest speaker Dan. Dan, equipped with a slideshow presentation, described the unfortunate aftermath of allowing his daughter to hang out with her friends at the beach. When Dan’s daughter denied the presence of alcohol and/or fast drivers at the beach, he allowed her to go.

After a few hours, Dan gets a call that his daughter was involved in an accident. When he shows up to the scene, he notices a car that appeared to have had a catastrophic accident. It had turned out the driver of the car holding 5 people was speeding too fast and crashing into the pole, causing many fatalities. However, one individual that had been sitting in the center-back seat had survived. To Dan’s dismay, it was not his daughter. 

A few of the storytelling techniques that Dan used were: 

  1. Immerse your audience in a story: Throughout the entirety of Dan’s story, he provided us with supplemental images of the situation and relevant scenes that helped us get a visual grasp of what he was describing at any given point. 
  2. Tell a personal story: The courage that Dan demonstrated to share this story enabled us to connect with him on an emotional level. We were able to experience his hardship and feel as emotions as if they were almost ours. He shared this experience with us to demonstrate that anybody in that room could have made that wrong decision and end up in a similar circumstance. 
  3. Create suspense – Dan created tension in the story when he appeared at the scene and was rushing to see who the survived individual was and recreated the emotion during the moment.
  4. End with a positive takeaway – Dan went on to express how the memory of his daughter lives within him and that he dedicates his work to minimizing the chance of this happening to as many individuals as possible through persuasive and informative decision making. While there wasn’t an inherent positive takeaway, he mentions the familiar adage that should be implanted in everyone’s minds: Don’t drink and drive. 

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