Sunday, January 28, 2007

Learning communities are storytelling communities...

Excerpted from Jason's new book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity...

Revelation #8: Learning communities are primarily storytelling communities.


That’s when another revelation hit me: learning communities are primarily storytelling communities. Stories permeate our social fabric and have the primary function of teaching others, whether formally or informally. When you get right down to it, much of the communication that transpires among people, whether in a classroom, an office, or a living room, consists of telling stories.

I began to see and hear stories all around me, like a kind of social, emotional and psychological air we all breathed to stay alive. It become clear to me that our dependence on stories was deep and pervasive.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

In American Samoa, oral traditions are pretty strong as part of the "learning" process. It's like you said, it's telling stories to teach. Knowledge is past on from generation to another. Instead of transferring this medium of learning style, we should embrace it to provide the opportunity for other types of learners to learn. Often, modern educationalist think that oral tradition or "old", but it has lastest thousands of years and with many cultures and societies. I think we should use it as a medium for delivering to a diverse classroom of today.