The Shift Into Imagination
Everyone has desperate memories of time spent in a classroom that just seemed to crawl by. Minutes feel like hours; words just seem to stand there like half-conscious sheep, milling around pointlessly, waiting to be counted. You simply cannot see how any of the information could ever pertain to life on this planet. Imagination takes over… Away you drift…
What is often missing in these instances is context for the information being presented. Just as a handful of flour, a sugarcube and a drink of milk do not make a cupcake, dryly presented facts are usually not enough to engage our whole minds. We need the information to resonate on an emotional level as well. Simply put, if the audience is not engaged then communication will not happen to it’s full extent.
Of course, factual information is not the rare commodity it once was. The internet now allows access to a vast world of information for billions of people all over the world. This is revolutionary, and it has huge implications for the future.
In a world teeming with accessible information, context and the ability to deliver information with emotional impact – the essence of storytelling – becomes all the more important.
Thus, the use of educational storytelling is not only a great way to engage today’s students; it provides them with a model for narrative thinking, use of metaphor and descriptive language – all linked to creativity - that will be what they need as adults to thrive in the 21st century.
