StoryToGo

Exploring storytelling in its many forms in this digital age

Courses

Featured in Feedspot’s Top 10 Canadian Storytelling Blogs

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What a great way to start the day off, by opening an email from Feedspot Founder Anuj Agarwal congratulating us on being featured in Feedspot’s Top 10 Canadian Storytelling Blogs! We sit at #4, and find it rather fitting that on a list of Canadian Storytelling Blogs that a Newfoundlander sits at #1!

Have a read to discover the other wonderful sites on the list!

Top 10 Canadian Storytelling Blogs

What’s made us even happier is that after reading we decided to look up Feedspot’s Top Canadian Travel Blogs, which is a top 70 list. #12 on that list is Go Far Grow Close, a travel blog developed by one of our past students, Nicole Hunter, in our BCST 1073 (now BCST 3073) – Building Your Digital Media Presence and BCST 1193 – Social Media Storytelling. This is very well deserved, as Nicole has worked hard at her storytelling, approaching it with love, passion, and attention to details on things like SEO – continuing to build, learn, grow, and develop long past our courses. Well done, Nicole!

Our own digital travel magazine, Roamancing, is also on the list at #19! And we see a number of other friends of ours from the travel community featured on the list as well. Check them out!

Top Canadian Travel Blogs

Congratulations to all the sites listed, and for all the hard work and passion that you have poured into your storytelling over the years!

Also a shout out of thanks to Grant for the Web, BCIT, and CNIE (through the AMTEC Trust Award), whose support have helped to fund much of our storytelling here the past couple of years.

E² – Entertainment & Education : At Home Entertainment Magazine ~ Edition 2

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We invited you to join us as we launch into new opportunities and connect with creatives, educators, and natural and cultural history interpreters from around the world!

Photographed by Manyu Varma, via UnSplash.

3,2,1 … Blast Off! The StoryToGo Classroom Soft Launches

Phew!  It’s been a busy Spring and Summer for us, as we’ve been building the new StoryToGo Classroom and developing and teaching some initial courses there.

We’d love to invite you to come check it out. Just click on the button below.

Visit the New StoryToGo Classroom Site

As those of you that are regular readers here are aware, StoryToGo is a community site developed by Lori Yearwood, Kevin Ribble, and myself (Erica Hargreave) to explore contemporary storytelling, education, and culture with colleagues from across Canada and around the World.

While we are just getting started, stay tuned on the site for:

  • Contemporary Storytelling Courses (spanning the arts)
  • Marketing and Branding Courses
  • Technology Courses
  • Youth Camps, Classes, and Virtual Field Trips
  • A Culture Hub (with courses that allow you to virtually travel and learn about different cultures around the world)
  • A Health and Wellness Centre (with classes and courses in yoga, mindfulness, office exercises, and nature escapes)
  • A Teacher Hub (with resources for educators)

If you are interested in creating and building courses with us, please reach out. We’d love to chat.  Aside from creatives in a variety of disciplines, we’d also love to involve some of the tourism, parks, and arts organizations that we’ve worked with over the years in developing classes and courses for the Culture Hub and Health and Wellness Centre.

The Courses on the site are a mix of Open, Free, Paid, and Private Group Courses. Below we share a few of the initial courses that are available there now.

Some of the Initial Camps and Courses in the StoryToGo Classroom

As we soft launch the new StoryToGo Classroom site, we invite you to checkout our initial classes, camps and courses!

Open Courses:

Free Classes:

Online Summer Camps:

Online Music Lessons:

Photo by Fitsum Admasu, via UnSplash.

Upcoming Online Camps and Courses at BCIT

We are rather delighted to be developing and delivering BCIT’s first ever online summer camp! 

The camp, Animated Stories, will be offered twice this summer:

  • July 27 – 31 for 8 – 13 year olds
  • August 10 – 14 for 13 – 17 year olds

Also this coming Autumn, we will be offering both of our post-secondary accredited, online courses through BCIT’s Broadcast Media and Communications Part Time Studies Program.

We hope to see you in class!

In other exciting news, we have just signed a contract with Tom Skerritt’s new channel, EVRGRN, to stream and distribute the full documentary version of Naturally Ours : Salt Spring Island.  This means new channels and air dates to catch the documentary, starting with STIRR for those of you in the United States!

And don’t forget, you can still watch the full documentary on Fearless, and the web series on Seeka TV and Stareable!

Stories That Matter to Us

The last few months have held many things that impact our team of storytellers deeply and personally.  We’ve done a little writing on that.

Black Lives Matter

Mindfulness

Meditating

Healthy & Fun

Eating Well

Connecting from Afar

Torre Unconf 

Recently Lori and I had fun participating in an Unconference that Torre hosted.  This was a great way to connect with new colleagues around the world and discuss ideas. 

Future StoryToGo Unconf

As such we are exploring the idea of hosting a StoryToGo Unconference this coming winter as a way of bringing people together around the world in the creative arts, tourism, education, technology, and health and wellness.  If this is something that you’d enjoy developing with us, please drop us a line.

Stress Free Summer Festival

Speaking of connecting from afar, our friends at Master Peace are hosting a week of interesting and free talks until Friday July 17th, with their Stress Free Summer Festival for those of you interested in partaking.

Stay safe and well, and find things to keep you laughing and dreaming.

With healthy wishes from Erica, Lori, Kevin, Anne, Alex and the rest of our Ahimsa Media, StoryToGo and Roamancing team.

Ringing in 2020 with Storytelling and Digital Media Courses at BCIT

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As we ring in a new year, it had me reflecting on what is important to me, and this old proverb …

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

Photographed by Cristian Palmer, care of Unsplash.

There is no greater gift that you can give yourself or another than learning a skill that helps pursue one’s passions. This is the reason why sharing knowledge is an important part of what we aim to do here with StoryToGo.

The Importance of Sharing Knowledge For Us

When I started speaking in 2008 about bridging the worlds of media, interactive and cross-platform storytelling, and digital media, it occurred to me that while inspiring people through my talks was great and all, to truly help people to take action, they needed a course giving them guidance and support while they build and craft their storyworlds.

Interactive Storytelling
Erica Hargreave and Caitlin Burns on a Panel on Convergent Storytelling.
Photographer: Liz Kearsley

A year later, after pitching the local post secondary schools, my first post-secondary school courses launched at BCIT and Capilano University. Since then my team and I have also built courses and workshops and taught community, undergraduate and graduate courses at Ryerson University, Humber College, and NVIT. In addition, we’ve helped build new programs and revise old programs. It has both been an honour to teach and share with others, and fulfills a passion of ours. We love teaching.

Creating Our Courses Online

In 2011, after speaking in Egypt, we recognized that to truly make a difference to people that could most benefit from our courses, we needed them to be available online.

Erica Hargreave speaking on ‘Real Time’ Storytelling at the UNWTO Conference on Working with Media in Challenging Times in Marsa Alam, Egypt.

Thanks to BCIT and our colleague Kevin Ribble, they were by 2013. This has also allowed Lori Yearwood to help build and teach those courses with me.

2020 Courses at BCIT

I am happy to share that as we move into 2020, we now have 2 online post-secondary credited courses and 2 intensive community courses offered through BCIT’s Broadcast Media and Communications Part Time Studies. All of our courses are project based, in which our students come out of them having built or built upon projects of their own that they are crafting for their future endeavours.

For those of you who are looking to give yourself and someone in your life the gift of learning this year, these are a few of the courses that we will be teaching in 2020:

Photographed by Ian Schneider, care of Unsplash.

More Coming on StoryToGo

Also keep your eyes peeled here as we will be launching the StoryToGo Classroom site later this year with mini online courses, and tailored online and blended courses for organizations from us and our rich group of storytelling friends and colleagues.

If you have a course that you would love to see offered through StoryToGo, please let us know in the comments, and if you wish us to tailor create a course for your organization, please send us an email.

Photographed by by Danielle Macinnes, care of Unsplash.

Raising a glass of whatever your preferred beverage to a happy and rewarding new year and new decade, rich in learning!