Wellbeing, inclusion & diversity
Teacher resources & training
Creativity
Through Digital Storytelling Workshops
Correlation between creativity and digital storytelling
Crafting a digital story builds communication between the story teller and audience increases the visual and sound literacy...
Ideas for Icebreaker activity
Someone could say that it’s difficult to teach in a classroom consisting of students of different social, linguistic, religious and ethnic background. Indeed, it might be difficult, but sometimes another non conventional approach may be applied.
One such practise is followed in my school. The teacher asked the students to make a box with an opening and to put a photo of themselves inside, when they were in their country of origin.
In case students didn’t have such a photo because they were born in Greece, the teacher asked them to make drawings and decoration on the box referring to their country of origin.
The students talk…
…about their country of origin without feeling stressed or inhibitions.
The teacher takes all the boxes and put all the boxes on the top of each other so as to refer to the Tower of Babel.
As a response, students have said that their origin should not be an obstacle in their lives, but rather something to cherish and embrace.
writing therapy as an icebreaker
OK, let’s talk about the writing therapy as an ice breaker, and it’s a part of emotional intelligence development. Talking about the sensitive topics or issues. It’s not easy because usually it’s related with some memories and experiences.
And it’s very painful.
Talking about the sensitive issues: It’s not easy because what is sensitive is often painful. And talking about this it’s very vulnerable and insecure actually.
And writing therapy as an exercise is an amazing tool to break the ice and open the gates for the emotional intelligence.
It’s very important. Remember to introduce to everyone the process properly, how you are going to do it and what the instructions and rules are. So, the instructions starts from very simply. It starts with writing for 10 minutes.
One of the important things is that we are writing all the time during those 10 minutes. This means, our hand has to write all the time.
If during those 10 minutes you don’t know what to write or thinking that OK, my story ended, then we need to still keep writing because this is a part of the therapy and we must just write.
I don’t know what to write. I feel uncomfortable that I don’t know what to write, so you can just…
…describe and write about the way you feel at that moment. It is really important not to stop to writing.
It’s very simple. If you are going to have a workshop on a topic like bullying at school, then you can just start the sentence and the task is then actually this sentence: to turn it into the story. It means we are going to write for…
10 minutes and I’m starting the sentence. Like for example, my most memorable experience…
…at school or in the class and then please continue and turn this into the story and just leave the participants to write.
For the 10 minutes.
And during the writing, it’s very important that you remember to remind the participants that there is no censorship. Just let all thoughts be written down on paper.
And after 10 minutes you can share your thoughts on the way you feel, just share what is safe for you with others in the circle. And usually this really helps…
…to create that security in the group and a willingness to share more.
how to foster creativity
To create a desired digital story you need creativity.
And teachers, you will need to find the creative side of students and foster it.
Here the question is how. At this point showing well designed, well scripted, well visualised digital stories will help.
I also recommend you a group activity where students will work in teams and create stories together.
It’s called storyboarding.
Here you will…
…choose images focusing on social inclusion, exclusion, friendship or diversity.
Then ensure everyone picks one.
Then each group will write scenarios starting with the image they pick.
They will draw three more pictures as the next part of the first image.
Then they will write scripts under each image.
And finally, a group member will tell this story in front of the audience.
This implementation will be very helpful in respect to creativity along with self-confidence.
It will also provide a comparative, a cooperative atmosphere in the classroom…
…among diverse groups, thanks.
