Storytelling in education
1. What is Storytelling?
It is a technique that combines the best of storytelling with advances in neuroscience, discovering that the mind likes to read, consume and is attracted to patterns that are easy to identify. So, telling a story makes the mind engage with patterns it recognizes.
The storytelling is achieved by translating the information into a story, which will always have as its basis a emotion because neuroscience and advances have shown us that we do not think and feel in isolation but at the same time; that is, reasons and sensations are intertwined: we cannot think without feeling, nor feel without thinking.
If we want students to remember something we need to give them an impact through a main character, with which they will start; since the mind always becomes a protagonist, and with a dramatic arc that positions us a beginning, a conflict and a solution and the best thing about storytelling is that it always presents simple characters.
At what educational levels can Storytelling be used?
Storytelling can be used at any educational level. From preschool to university. A story seduces us all because we ourselves are in our own story, a story that has brought us to where we are, and that has helped us to be human beings in love, passionate professionals, and leads us to understand life from another perspective.
3. How to become storytellers?
It is not complicated to become a Storyteller, you just need a good imagination and a methodology that consists of: first, find out what is the message you want to communicate, what do you want your students to stay, and from that we have to find a character and a transition. With this and a lot of practice you will become a great storyteller.
4. What are the benefits of Storytelling?
- Stories are contagious and easy which promotes better retention of information.
- It helps us to be empathetic, through neuronal synchrony, because you can transmit to others what you see and what you feel in such a way that our brain processes empathize and harmonize.
5. Tools we can implement
There are countless tools that can be used to support the telling of a story, from the voice, although of course it is something that must be trained, to the new technologies that are emerging, such as videos with photographs. Storytelling through art also benefits the emotional side. A tattoo can have a story behind it, legos can also be a useful alternative.
6. How to work on the beginning/end of a story.
- The first thing to do is to keep in mind what emotion you want to convey to your audience, do you want to scare them, move them, etc.?
- Then search for a keyword and once you find it look for your character/archetype, a hero, a mentor, an innocent.
- Then choose the qualities that will highlight this character and generate empathy.
- Then he looks for the obstacle, the thing that prevents him from achieving his goals.
- Once you have that you should start building the plot, how the events are going to change.
- Finally you create your ending, which can be sad or it can be happy, but what you must always keep in mind is that it must present a change in our character, the character cannot be the same, it has to have a transformation from when it started to when it ended.
7. Digital tools for Storytelling
We can start prototyping in a tool like Padlet or Miro, then we make a storyboard and finally we make a video.
There are undoubtedly an infinite number of tools you can use to work on these three points.
8. Conclusion
Education always finds ways to break through and Storytelling is proof of that, learning through stories and tales is a very versatile way to motivate your students’ learning, and the best thing is that there is no age limit.
“We are the stories we tell.” Regina Freyman.
We must be very careful with what we tell ourselves because every night we are editing the human being we are.
9. References
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