Storytelling 101

Storytelling 101

I actually published this by accident the first time. I meant to push it to my presentations blog (http://snupresentations.blogspot.com). I decided to leave it here, though. It speaks not just to those giving presentations, but also those of us who stand in front of classes every day. Teaching is more than pushing information to students. It is participating with them in the quest for knowledge and creating good stories together.

Nice presentation on making good presentations. Emphasizes the need for a good story behind the presentation.

Most academics seem to think that they just need to push the information out to the audience and that these types of presentations are for business or just "non-scientists". This is certainly far from the truth. You want people to remember your presentation and, in fact, remember you (conferences are more about networking than exchanging ideas). I'm sure that you remember good speakers much better than poor ones...which do you want to be?

Storytelling 101

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: sherlock rockstar)

CogDogRoo » StoryTools

CogDogRoo » StoryTools

It always amazes me when I come upon a posting like this. I'm amazed because there is something new. I feel like I'm at this 24/7 and see everything out of the starting blocks, but there's always something else.

This is a list of applications that can be used to tell digital stories. There is something here for everyone and enough to keep you exploring for quite a while.

Some of my favorites are: VoiceThreads, VUVOX, Scrapblog, Google My Maps, Splashcast, Animoto, Slideshare, and Sketchcast.

Dan

VoiceThread

VoiceThread

This is a cool tool. You upload photos for a slideshow, then you can comment (audio or text) on each of the pictures. What's better, though, is that others can also comment.

Here is my sample (terrible production value, but I can work on that). It is a few pictures from a 4th of July parade. http://voicethread.com/view.php?b=5299&invite=4AbMIeWWvU.

I'd like to point out the URL above. You can share this slideshow with others, but it has to be make public to embed in a blog (external website). So, I created a friend (my other email) and "shared" the show with that friend. That led me to this URL. While I don't mind my presentation being public, I don't really want all users of that site to be dropping in and leaving messages. This would be particularly problematic if you were using this for a class. So, either get all of your students in your friends list, I do something like I described above so you can post a link to the content.

This could be a great tool to elicit iCBT-type test responses from your students, or other contributions of voice or text. While it does not work as a threaded discussion, you could have serial discussions through this medium, which is similar to what you get with most blog commenting features.

This might also be good for tutorials. Users could see a screenshot or other images and listen to or read the instructions/descriptions. I picture this as being good to use in one window with the software interface in another window (using audio puts less focus on the image, but it's there if they need it).

Dan

Chinswing - Creating Conversations (A place to share, discuss and debate)

This is a interesting application. It is basically an audio discussion forum. It is linear, with the starting comment/question played first then all of the responses played linearly afterwards.

While I don't see this being good for our class, I think that it can be good for language classes. I saw a couple interesting uses already in action. One thread was a building story, one person starts then the next continues and so forth. Another way could be to record brief student presentations or opinion pieces or introduction and so forth.

Check it out for yourself.