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"Storytelling has been around as long as humankind. It is one of the most effective ways to communicate an important truth to another person. It is a connection point between two people. It gives meaning, context, and understanding in a world that is often filled with chaos and disorder. Because of this, educators must use stories if they hope to reach their students. Stories will stay with people much longer than facts or statistics. If a teacher becomes an excellent storyteller, he or she can ensure that any concept they teach will be remembered for years to come."

"These rules were originally tweeted by Emma Coats, Pixar's Story Artist. "

"In August of 2017, we had a 2-day Storytelling Summit here in our Portland studio. Each of the attendees created their own story, and we filmed each of them at the end of the workshop. To help them make the most of the opportunity, and so that they could decide which one story they wanted to tell, we started by breaking things down into the 7 types of stories. What many of the attendees noticed, and what you'll likely realize as well, is that there are many more ways to use stories than you'd once thought."

"I've used the story of Rudolph as a "mentor text" ever since. At 88 words, Rudolph is shorter than the Jesus parables and the Lincoln speeches, works often praised for their brevity and high purpose. In the digital age, writers need reminders that memorable stories can be told in short forms. I now believe that there may be no more efficient example for teaching the elements of story than Rudolph. I use it to discuss the naming of characters, the telling detail, the inciting incident, the narrative arc, the story engine, the mythic archetype and the big payoff."

"Meridian Stories believes that Digital Literacy needs to be regularly practiced in schools. In support of that, we produce an annual Digital Storytelling Competition in which there are fifteen different Challenges from which to choose: five each in Language Arts, STEAM and History. Each Challenge - 3 to 4 week projects - demands that students (grades 5th - 12th) research deeply, think creatively and problem-solve iteratively, in order to produce short digital stories about curricular content."

"Welcome to Storyboard's first annual year-end roundup of top storytelling: 34 of our favorite pieces in audio, magazines, newspapers and online, "

"Teachers self-promote. In that, we're no different than everyone else: proudly framing our breakthroughs, hiding our blunders in locked drawers, forever perfecting our oral résumés. This isn't all bad. My colleagues probably have more to learn from my good habits (like the way I use pair work) than my bad ones (like my sloppy system of homework corrections), so I might as well share what's useful. In an often-frustrating profession, we're nourished by tales of triumph. A little positivity is healthy. But sometimes, the classrooms we describe bear little resemblance to the classrooms where we actually teach, and that gap serves no one. Any honest discussion between teachers must begin with the understanding that each of us mingles the good with the bad. One student may experience the epiphany of a lifetime, while her neighbor drifts quietly off to sleep. In the classroom, it's never pure gold or pure tin; we're all muddled alloys. I taught once alongside a first-year teacher, Lauren, who didn't grasp this. As a result, she compared herself unfavorably to everyone else. Every Friday, when we adjourned to the bar down the street, she'd decry her own flaws, meticulously documenting her mistakes for us, castigating herself to no end. The kids liked her. The teachers liked her. From what I'd seen, she taught as well as any first-year could. But she saw her own shortcomings too vividly and couldn't help reporting them to anyone who'd listen. She was fired three months into the year. You talk enough dirt about yourself and people will start to believe it. Omission is the nature of storytelling; describing a complex space-like a classroom-requires a certain amount of simplification. Most of us prefer to leave out the failures, the mishaps, the wrong turns. Some, perhaps as a defensive posture, do the opposite: Instead of overlooking their flaws and miscues, they dwell on them, as Lauren did. The result is that two classes, equally well taugh

"Writing coaches asked students to think of a family recipe with a backstory - and then write an essay around that dish. The 81 recipes and their accompanying stories that resulted make up a cookbook of global cuisine with a heartfelt touch, revealing that storytelling may be the most important step in any recipe."

"Project Ed is a platform dedicated to educational video made for and by 21st century learners. The core of Project Ed is an open, community-driven approach to content. We start by identifying K-12 concepts where a video has the potential to create a meaningful impact.Then we design contests to take these lessons out of the classroom and put them in the hands of digital storytellers. Each contest starts with a "creative brief," that includes everything needed to achieve a specific learning goal. Once the brief is launched on Projected.com, creators from all over craft original narratives to teach in unforgettable ways. Each brief generates hundreds of new ideas and a multitude of submissions. This process brings together the rigor of curriculum experts and the passion of creators to build an open library of effective, engaging lessons."

"A recently published game called "Gone Home" is testing the traditional progression of learning by flattening the story. Players have questioned whether it qualifies as a game since it doesn't include traditional points, prizes and leveling up (the game is self-titled as "a story exploration video game"). Critics have praised "Gone Home" as a new way of storytelling, and it's beginning to make its way into the classroom, as a viable substitute for traditional text. The game is non-linear and players have a great deal of agency for filling in the gaps to arrive at their conclusions.*"

Seven minute video on storytelling: "For the award-winning writer George Saunders, the process of crafting a good story means not condescending to your reader. It means creating sentences that clue them into something unnoticed about the character, and allowing them to figure it out. "A bad story is one where you know what the story is and you're sure of it," he says in this short film, George Saunders: On Story."

Given the recent rise in podcast popularity, it's no surprise that audio narratives are making their way into the classroom. They offer an engaging way for teachers to merge project-based learning with digital media analysis and production skills. That's why we're announcing our first-ever Student Podcast Contest, in which we invite students to submit original podcasts, five minutes long or less, inspired by one of our 1,000-plus writing prompts. The contest will run from April 26 to May 25, so stay tuned for our official contest announcement next week In anticipation of that contest, the mini-unit below walks students through the process of analyzing the techniques that make for good storytelling, interviewing and podcasting. The activities culminate in students producing their own original podcasts.

"Start with simple assignments that are an easy transition from what you and your students are already familiar with. Try blogging, then build to more complex projects like podcasting or video storytelling. In addition to concentrating on the ideas and the writing itself, try to create situations where the students' writing takes advantage of the medium and the connectedness of the internet. Some criteria I use to develop assignments include: student agency engagement and passion audience impact beyond the classroom authoring skills and experiences needed for success outside of academia collaboration and connectivity with other authors and audience members experiences authoring in a variety of media other than text When we develop our writing assignments, we must ultimately come back to one main concern: purpose. Why are we giving specific types of writing assignments and how do they help our students convey their ideas in ways that resonate with their audience?"

Stories for the Classroom: "Want to share Moth stories with your students? Start with this educator recommended playlist:"

"In stories throughout the ages there is one motif that continually recurs-the journey into the woods to find the dark but life-giving secret within."

"Thanks to new text-mining techniques, this has now been done. Professor Matthew Jockers at the University of Nebraska, and later researchers at the University of Vermont's Computational Story Lab, analysed data from thousands of novels to reveal six basic story types - you could call them archetypes - that form the building blocks for more complex stories. The Vermont researchers describe the six story shapes behind more than 1700 English novels as: 1. Rags to riches - a steady rise from bad to good fortune 2. Riches to rags - a fall from good to bad, a tragedy 3. Icarus - a rise then a fall in fortune 4. Oedipus - a fall, a rise then a fall again 5. Cinderella - rise, fall, rise 6. Man in a hole - fall, rise"

"We are trying out a new feature. Call it writing practice (with a nod to Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones," where I first encountered the term). Or virtual workshopping.  Or maybe simply shop class. The goal is to break down the work that goes into creating stories, and offer prompts or small suggestions to help you practice that work. The assignment: to see beyond first sight. To sit long enough in one place to get past surface impressions and personal projections, and try to see what more lie before them. To draw on their other senses: sound, smell, taste, touch. Finally to see even beyond those physical senses to memory, metaphor, history and emotion. In other words, to see the possibility of stories. To notice, question, wonder - and write it all down."

"Over the next several weeks, we're going to do a series of posts that looks at the 7 Types of Stories and breaks down each one in great detail. Up first-The Origin Story. The origin story-the story of how a business, idea, product, or service came to be-is one of the most common, and most powerful, types of stories we can tell."

"Are you ever SO excited to tell your friends a story that you kind of jumble the whole thing up? Like the substance is there, but if the delivery is off it just doesn't LAND as well. The same thing goes for podcasting. Even if we can hear in your voice that you're excited about something, if there's no structure or narrative to the piece it can be hard to hook an audience. This week on The Students' Podcast, we're revisiting an episode from last season where we talk to some of our high school finalists who managed to tell their story really well."