Blog Post 3: Storytelling and Creating Video

What Learning Experience Does a Branched Narrative like Twine Provide for Learners?

A branching narrative like Twine provides an interactive experience for learners that can act as an enriching addition to a lesson or learning experience. This can often increase engagement with learning material and allow for learners to feel that they have some agency over their learning experience as they make choices in the branched narrative. Branching narratives also provide the challenge of allowing learners to practise decision making and critical thinking skills, as they are presented with multiple decisions that lead to varying quality of outcomes. They must evaluate the decisions and attempt to understand which would lead to the best outcome, weighing different options they’re presented with. It also provides them with a fun environment to practise learning from mistakes and trying new processes when something doesn’t work the first time around. 

Where Else do you Come Across Branched Narratives?

One of the most popular examples I thought of for other branched narratives was the choose your own adventure books I used to read as a kid. Based on decisions you made within the story, you would have to jump to different parts of the book to continue the plot you’ve chosen for yourself to continue. Another popular example would be some story based video games.

In The Reading This Week, 7 Storytelling Techniques Used by the Most Inspiring TED Presenters, Which of the Presenters did you Find Most Compelling? What Technique(s) did you Recognize in Their Talk?

The “7 Storytelling Techniques Used by the Most Inspiring TED Presenters” article provided great insight and presented many compelling presenters who utilized effective storytelling elements. One of the presenters I thought was the most compelling was Richard Turere, who told a captivating and inspiring story about his homeland of Kenya, and the problem that his community faced. He told the story of how the lions in the area around his village would attack and kill the livestock his people depended on as one of their main sources of food, and that the solution before his invention was to kill the lions. I noticed several storytelling techniques Richard used to inspire his listeners and grab their attention. First, he was effectively able to immerse his audience into the story, by using imagery and simple language to make the story easy to understand and immerse yourself in. He was able to effectively use visual aids that captured attention and evoked emotion in listeners even though they were sometimes graphic, like the half eaten carcass of a cow. This was a personal story which portrayed the triumph against adversity, which made listeners emotionally invest themselves into what the presenter was saying. I also noticed that Richard was able to create suspense by providing the story in chronological order, presenting the conflict in a way that conveyed its importance, and created a tale of triumph as he described figuring out the solution to protecting their livestock and avoiding killing the lions. 

To use the link copy and paste it into google!! Its not working when you just click:( Here’s the link to play my twine story! I had so much fun making it let me know what you think!