We are most excited to share more of the thought provoking material we have been building up through our storytelling adventures, via the new StoryToGo YouTube channel that we have just launched! This is for all Storyworld creators, whether you work in traditional, digital media, marketing, or education, and whether you are an at the forefront or a behind the scenes person. Or perhaps you are even someone who would just like to grab a story to go! Take a look at our teaser video of what’s to come, hosted by our very own Erica Hargreave.
storytelling
Ringing in 2020 with Storytelling and Digital Media Courses at BCIT
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.
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.
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.
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:
- BCST 1073 – Building Your Digital Media Presence (an online, work on your own schedule each week, course starting in January)
- BCST 1193 – Social Media Storytelling (an online, work on your own schedule each week, course scheduled to be offered in April)
- BCST 0107 – Travel Writing: Your Journey from Branding to Monetizing your Travel Stories (stay tuned for a Summer intensive course offering)
- BCST 0108 – Creating and Marketing your Own Web Series (stay tuned for a Summer intensive course offering)
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.
Raising a glass of whatever your preferred beverage to a happy and rewarding new year and new decade, rich in learning!
Learning Stop Motion Filmmaking With Lego
As some of you may have guessed, we wear many hats. We are storytellers, educators, technologists, scientists, dancers, and marketers. We love that the work we do allows us to put on those many hats, and enjoy the different experiences and facets of our work, including still getting a little bit of kid time with Ahimsa Kids.
Recently with that, I had the opportunity to work with an intelligent and engaging 10-year-old, who once he finished his school work, we were able to dive into the world of edtech and stop motion filmmaking together. Stop motion is something he has a keen interest in, along with lego, and he’d just been given the Klutz: LEGO Make Your Own Movie book. It didn’t take long after flipping through the book, which was a 2018 Toy of the Year finalist, for me to become just as hooked as he was on the process. So the two of us embarked on making our own first stop motion lego film together.
This was a fun cross-curricular project to embark on. In the process, my young student developed and wrote a story, learned to storyboard …
… and filmed a stop motion movie. We brainstormed and experimented with blocking and special effects. My young student’s huge assortment of lego helped with this, along with scene backdrops in the Klutz: LEGO Make Your Own Movie book and all sorts of items in the LEGO Movie Maker Building Kit (which he’d got for his birthday), from which we learned how to build an adjustable stand for our camera (aka smartphone).
Finally my young student troubleshot how best to record the various voice overs for the project, and he and I will eventually edit the stop motion film together – that piece we did not get to on-set, so are planning to get together to finish in the not so distant future. Lego does have a free movie making app to help with the editing process, called Movie Maker, but we decided to use iMovie for this, as earlier on the set, my young student had shot his first documentary and I’d taught him how to use iMovie to edit it.
I have to say, this was a lot of fun, and something I could see wanting to incorporate into my school, if I still taught in a school. With this, I could see this being a full language and media arts project, a station set up in the classroom for kids that finished their other work early, a makerspace activity, or an after school club. It is also a fun at home activity, as well as a great project for homeschoolers. I myself am now looking for excuses to play with making lego stop motion movies in our work – possibly in future tutorial videos for StoryToGo or for one of my Master of Educational Technology videos. My young student kindly gifted me the LEGO Movie Maker Building Kit, and I am going to buy the Klutz: LEGO Make Your Own Movie book for myself, my nieces and nephews, and a few of my friends’ kids, as this really is such a fun experience. I can see why Lori was so fascinated by her visit to the Laika Studios and learning about stop motion storytelling there.
If lego stop motion or stop motion in general is something that you’ve been having fun experimenting with, I’d love to hear any tips and tricks you may have, and to see your videos, if you want to drop your thoughts and links in the comments below. And if you have been creating lego stop motion or stop motion videos with your students, whether in traditional school or homeschool settings, I’d love to hear about how and what is working for you and your students, in the comments below.
Thanks! I hope you have fun with this!