Now that we have introduced the elements of creativity into the storytelling domain, it is your turn to demonstrate some of that new learning. Borrowing from Biz Stone’s ideas on necessity being the mother of invention, your job is to create a 30-second story from the statement below. By now you should be able to tell anyone who asks why this is not a story, according to the definition definitions we have at this point. When you create your story try to insert as much as you can using Branigan, Mandler and Kintsch.
Yes I know I am not playing fair because of what I said in the lesson about providing some form of advance organizer. I am breaking that rule because I wanted to leave this wide open to see what you come up with on your own:
Once upon a time there was a man.
— The end
While you can chose any media form you want, I thought it would be fun to experiment with any one of these very easy to use products:
- Voki is a Web-based product that works well on all platforms.
- Tellagami is suitable for mobile devices (and therefore will fit nicely into any BYOD classroom). Note that it does not yet work well on Windows 8 (so what else is new about that horrible release!)
- Some of you may have already worked with Go Animate in another course. If not, it also has a very short learning curve to set it up to use for this activity. This one is also Web based
All products hold a 30 second maximum timeline, making them perfectly suited for our imposed limitations of creating/inventing the perfect (according to Branigan’s four principles) 30-second story. For both you can create backgrounds and design your avatars. On Tellagami you can actually use your iPad or Android to take a picture to use as the background. Voki even allows you to utilize multiple languages. Each is very easy to use and set up something very quickly. You can record your voice using a script (5 line limit).
If you insist on using text, then your limit is five sentences. Once you are done, provide a link to your story (or embed it into) in the Drop Box set up on Canvas.