Category: Storytelling
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Make Me Care
Andrew Stanton’s line, “The greatest story commandment is: Make me care.” stopped me in my tracks when I first heard it almost a year ago. I was on my way to working with a couple of teachers in another area of Quebec and had a long drive ahead of me, so I plugged in my […]
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Why blog? (and it’s not about making learning fun.)
Blogging is not about making journaling fun for students. It’s not about trying to find a reason for students to spell correctly. It’s not even about connecting them to global others. I can think of no more horrible an exercise than forcing all of the students in my class to create a blog for the […]
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Truth about stories
Two very different stories about the same events. Story #1 Five police cruisers torched, 40 protesters arrested as native anti-fracking rally turns violent. The National Post Police. Torched. Protesters Arrested. Native. Violent. Story #2 New Brunswick fracking protests are the frontline of a democratic fight. The Guardian New Brunswick. Protests. Frontline. Democratic. A number of […]
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Flashback: seeking to understand
This post was originally written in 2009 and is still very relevant to me. I hope you think so as well. — A norm that I aspire to, however difficult it can be at times is this one: Seek to understand before being understood. I just read a story about an administrator who practices this […]
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Let me tell you a story … about teaching and technology
I’m teaching a class on creating a radio show and podcasting. I’m working with 11 enthusiastic and interested adult learners and I’m quite excited about it myself. Yesterday was our 2nd meeting. Let me tell you a little story about teaching and technology… My plan was 3-fold: Talk about commitment to the course Each person […]
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Funny story about making educational video
I know what makes a boring, didactically challenged video. I even spent some time not two weeks ago talking about this, analyzing this with other educators. And yet, today I struggled with creating a video (multimedia presentation…actually glorified powerpoint, whatever) that didn’t fall into that description. The presentation is just a little thing but I […]
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A story of my name
Let me tell you a story… When I was 5 years old I changed my name to Harmonica Goldfish. The motivation behind that is still a bit unclear but the context was that my family had just moved to Manhattan and I spontaneously told the new children I met at the park in front of […]
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On storytelling…
When I see my life as a story, with all the richness and depth of art, the beauty and serendipity and redemption, the synchronicity of forces beyond my knowing, I understand finally that I am not necessarily the author. From My faith: How storytelling saved my life by Edward Grinnan for CNN