Though I'm a little late with my response, I'm glad that I got a chance to check out some of the webinars that were listed for our browsing. I listened/watched the webinar titled 'Build Your own Narrative Textbook' present by Mark Geary and moderated by Prof K.
I will admit, especially since entering my placement I've been slowly but surely getting on the technology bandwagon. The truth is, I would say that 80-90% of the students I'm interacting with are almost completely unmotivated to engage in schooling. Anything that I can do to get them invested in their education, I'm for! For this reason, because really before entering my placement I never would have checked something like this out, I was attracted to the idea of transforming dull textbook information into a graphic novel form.
Though a lot of the webinar time was spent on defending the idea that transforming textbooks into graphic novel form is viable, there was still a lot of useful information. Mr.Geary gave many useful tips on how to transform content into story-like form. He talked about the use of emotion and being able to hook students in by addressing the incessant question of 'why is this important' with an emotional answer. He also showed some examples of how this process would look. That was probably the best part of the webinar. Though the example was better geared for elementary/middle school, I looked up the comic created by med students. That comic was really well done and exciting. I would love to have something like that for my own students.
In addition, to thinking about creating things so that my students can better understand, I would also actually want to engage them in the creative process. I think the students themselves would be great assets in helping to create these stories for future generations of students. Even more exciting is the fact that I'm working in social studies and really the possibilities for story-telling are quite endless ...
I will admit, especially since entering my placement I've been slowly but surely getting on the technology bandwagon. The truth is, I would say that 80-90% of the students I'm interacting with are almost completely unmotivated to engage in schooling. Anything that I can do to get them invested in their education, I'm for! For this reason, because really before entering my placement I never would have checked something like this out, I was attracted to the idea of transforming dull textbook information into a graphic novel form.
Though a lot of the webinar time was spent on defending the idea that transforming textbooks into graphic novel form is viable, there was still a lot of useful information. Mr.Geary gave many useful tips on how to transform content into story-like form. He talked about the use of emotion and being able to hook students in by addressing the incessant question of 'why is this important' with an emotional answer. He also showed some examples of how this process would look. That was probably the best part of the webinar. Though the example was better geared for elementary/middle school, I looked up the comic created by med students. That comic was really well done and exciting. I would love to have something like that for my own students.
In addition, to thinking about creating things so that my students can better understand, I would also actually want to engage them in the creative process. I think the students themselves would be great assets in helping to create these stories for future generations of students. Even more exciting is the fact that I'm working in social studies and really the possibilities for story-telling are quite endless ...
