Photography can do something that text on its own often cannot – draw the learner in and evoke curiosity about deeper meaning. When connected to storytelling, photographs can release an emotional response, which educators can harness to help students remember content. I whole-heartedly believe images created through the means of photography can be useful for teaching concepts in psychology or management fields that are new to students or tend to be difficult for them to grasp. Furthermore, photos may be especially helpful to demonstrate the meaning and subjective nature of individuals’ experiences as related to these fields due to the emotions they often evoke.

I hope this collection of photographs will serve as a teaching aid for educators and source of learning for students. I thoroughly enjoyed taking all the photos, editing them, writing compelling stories for each, and designing the book. I particularly believe that visual arts such as photography can help students of varying abilities, prior experiences, and backgrounds learn psychological content a bit more easily than traditional text-heavy books and therefore it was a worthwhile endeavor. I expect the book to push students to explore how various fields can meaningfully be integrated to understand the world around us. This book is an example of how visual arts and the sciences can be paired together to break down some of the illusory silos students often perceive between disciplines. As we go about our days, we understand our experiences in numerous ways including what we notice around us beyond written word. Our environment can illuminate understanding if we let it. Let’s help our students do this purposefully through photography.

NOTE: The images in this text are extremely high-quality. As a result, it may take some time to download and open the file.

Serial Storytelling examines the ways the passing and unfolding of time structures narratives in a range of media. From Rembrandt’s lifetime of self-portraits to The Wire, Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers to contemporary journalism and reportage, we will focus on the relationships between popular culture and art, the problems of evaluation and audience, and the ways these works function within their social context.

Storytelling is the oldest form of transmitting knowledge. Students in the 21st century need to be able to analyze and interpret stories in film as well as written text. In this unit students will analyze and compare four texts which contain embedded stories and magical realism, two narrative structures that can trouble readers but offer extraordinary riches. The central novel of the unit is the award-winning Kit’s Wilderness by David Almond which alludes to the fairy tale The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, a complex story that is actually taken up at the start of the unit. Kit’s Wilderness draws on the healing power of stories interwoven with topics of geology and dementia. The central film of the unit is The Secret of Roan Inish by John Sayles. A masterful work, it will provide a forum for analyzing cinematography as well as storytelling. Students can compare the use of magical realism and embedded stories in the novel and the film.

Students will then create their own stories, framing a fairy tale within it. They will also choose a novel and compare it to its adaptation.

This OER Nursing Textbook focuses on the use of critical thinking in nursing practice. The definition of critical thinking and the application of critical thinking skills in clinical practice, leadership, communication, quality improvement, and more is included. Each chapter includes images, critical thinking exercises, discussions, and activities. This textbook is found at https://thepraxisofcriticalthinkinginnursing.yolasite.com/

Too many of our teenagers were not read to when they were little and therefore have no nostalgic attachment to nor any interest in reading now. Simply telling them that reading is important to their success will not help these students form the socio-emotional connections to literature they did not make when they were younger. We have to give them the skills to make comprehension and complex literary analysis more gratifying than the mindless consumption of whatever easy entertainment their televisions and computers offer. If we can get them to need stories, and poems, and essays in the same way they seem to need the applications on their cell phones, then we can restore what was lost to the distractions, shortcomings, and traumas of their less than perfect childhoods. To do so, we must make reading feel fun and meaningful again (or for the first time) – rather than something that tortures our students and exposes their ignorance. This unit offers a multicultural exploration of the classic folktale “Little Red Riding Hood” as a path toward nurturing the bonds that literature creates between people and communities, giving us a sense of security, belonging, and purpose.

If words are creativity, then they are art. This is where the discipline of creative writing comes in, as well as that of screenwriting and therefore film-making. The two forms of media, while wholly different, are inextricably linked by that foundational, historic art form – storytelling. In a modern educational landscape where screen is preferred to page, it may be advantageous to stress the importance of both. There are lessons we can get from reading words that no screen will show us; as there are artistic things that can be done with images that could never be accomplished on the page. It is imperative, therefore, to make it clear for students that it is not better to see the movie, but to see the movie too . The simultaneous study of original, written story and its film adaptation can be a powerful learning tool, especially when the film in question is a vast re-imagining, paying concrete due to the original classic story while updating it for the modern imagination and culture. This curricular unit explores this consideration for several classic stories and their modern, reimagined film counterparts, with the intention of allowing students to apply their study of adaptation to their own independent reading.

Self-advocacy is a challenging task because it requires us to be vulnerable and express what is most important to us, often at the risk of negative consequences or backlash. This activity helps students to learn self-advocacy through storytelling. 

This course explores photography as a disciplined way of seeing or investigating urban landscapes, and expressing ideas. Readings, observations, and photographs form the basis of discussions on light, detail, place, poetics, narrative, and how photography can inform design and planning.
The current version of the class website for the course can be found here: Sensing Place: Photography as Inquiry.

This course explores photography as a disciplined way of seeing, of investigating landscapes and expressing ideas. Readings, observations, and photographs form the basis of discussions on landscape, light, significant detail, place, poetics, narrative, and how photography can inform design and planning, among other issues.

This course builds on the work done concurrently in 15.280 Communication for Managers and 15.311 Organizational Processes in the first semester of the MBA program. 15.280 is offered for 6 units and 15.277 provides an additional 3 units for a total of 9 units in Managerial Communication. 15.277 acts as a lab component to 15.280 and provides students additional opportunities to hone their communication skills through a variety of in-class exercises. Emphasis is on both individual and team communication.

This project-based course explores new design strategies for social interaction in the computer mediated world. Through weekly readings and design assignments we will examine topics such as:

Data-based portraiture
Depicting growth, change and the passage of time
Visualizing conversations, crowds, and networks
Interfaces for the connected city
Mobile social technologies

The course emphasizes developing visual and interactive literacy.

This seminar explores approaches to representation for distributed cinematic storytelling. The relationship between story creation and story appreciation is analyzed. Readings are drawn from literary and cinematic criticism, as well as from descriptions of interactive, distributed works. Students analyze a range of storytelling techniques; they develop a proposal using visualization techniques; and they prototype a working story experience, culminating in a final project displayed at the end of the semester.

In this video adapted from the University of Alaska, Anchorage, Alaska Native people of Chevak teach visitors about the beauty of Cup'ik culture and the spirit of the earth, sea, and animals.

The transition from high school and home to college and a new living environment can be a fascinating and interesting time, made all the more challenging and interesting by being at MIT. More than recording the first semester through a series of snapshots, this freshman seminar will attempt to teach photography as a method of seeing and a tool for better understanding new surroundings. Over the course of the semester, students will develop a body of work through a series of assignments, and then attempt to describe the conditions and emotions of their new environment in a cohesive final presentation.

About the Arts, Care & Connection Lesson Collection: Arts for Learning Northwest collaborated with Oregon teaching artists on this collection of arts integration modules designed for K-5 students, with integrated social emotional learning content in the areas of dance, visual arts, theater, and music. 

Story circles can be used to build a sense of community in the classroom. The technique was pioneered by the late John O’Neal, a civil rights activist and theater artist. He developed the story circle process while moderating audience discussions after performances. He found that audience members listened more and found common ground by telling personal stories instead of trying to persuade and argue their points.

The videos here demonstrate how a story circle works. A facilitator offers a prompt, and then individuals have a set amount of time to respond with a relevant story from their lives. No one interrupts. After everyone has a turn, the group talks together. From the individual stories, the group then creates one story or takeaway.

In these videos, Bob Martin, a community arts specialist in Eastern Kentucky, facilitates a story circle, adapted to an online format because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first video, Martin explains the ground rules and quotes O’Neal: “Share the story that comes from the deepest place.” He gives the group this prompt: Tell a story about a time when you were unexpectedly proud of your place or your community.