StoryToGo

Exploring storytelling in its many forms in this digital age

Instructor News

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.

A Children’s Yoga Adventure Story Created in Elementari

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Lori Yearwood created the most beautiful, calming, and relaxing animated adventure story today using Elementari – a platform designed to allow children, youth, teachers, schools, and adults to create interactive, animated stories. Lori’s story is crafted to give kids at home a relaxing yoga experience that takes them on a virtual adventure to a day at the seashore.

A Children’s Yoga Adventure Story to the Seashore

Watch, read, listen, and enjoy!

As you watch, read, listen, and enjoy the story above, wait for the flashing white arrow. Click on it to turn the pages. If it does not appear, then click the left arrow on your keyboard to flip the page. Also, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for things to click on within the story iteself.

Elementari

We were fortunate enough to ‘virtually meet’ and learn about Elementari from one of the founders, Nicole Kang. Nicole kindly participated in our new vlogcasting series on Sustainable Funding Solutions for Media, Educators, and Technologists. You can watch the premiere episode of the vlogcast featuring Nicole and Elementari, below.

Elementari is currently helping teachers and parents, who are looking for ways to keep kids learning during the COVID-19 school closures, by giving them free premium access to their interactive storytelling platform to help kids learn how to read, write, and code.

Request Free Premium Access

Lori Yearwood as Phoenix Rising

Aside from being one of the Founders of StoryToGo, Lori Yearwood is a children’s book author and has a newer not-so-secret identity as a yoga and exercise instructor. You can follow along with her yogi adventure at PhoenixMoments on Instagram.

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!

TEDx Warsaw: Erica Speaks on Immersive Storyworlds

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The title of Erica Hargreave‘s TEDx Warsaw talk, Permission to be the Other, couldn’t have been more perfect! She playfully spoke to a captivated audience about how to create immersive storyworlds by first allowing yourself to be creative and enter the minds of different characters. Take a glimpse into her brand of storytelling.

Erica is one of the World’s trailblazers in digital and transmedia storytellers, especially when it comes to bringing characters to life. She has been creating cross-platform media and immersive storyworlds before she knew there were terms for what she was doing. Currently her work is also directed at empowering students to create their own storyworlds at post-secondary schools in Canada. These courses are available online through BCIT to anyone in the World. You can learn more about them here: BCST 1193 – Social Media Storytelling and BCST 1073 – Building and Engaging Communities.

If you’d like to see more TEDx Talks from Erica, let TEDx know by filling in this form.