The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
Humans live in landscapes of make-believe. We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Even sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. It's easy to say that humans are "wired" for story, but why?
The Heart of the Matter is not a mystery, a high-octane adventure, nor does it center on an extraordinary event. Rather it is a story of one man whose faith and character is put to the ultimate test. That man is Henry Scobie. Henry Scobie is a British assistant police comissioner stationed in a West African coastal town during World War II. Scobie is a devout catholic who is unhappily married but feels obligated to fulfill his wife Louise's needs and make her happy. An honest man, Scobie has remained faithful to his wife in their fifteen years of marriage and has upheld his duties as an officer of the law. But ...
France, in the year 1838, was undergoing a period of political and economic chaos. Poverty and misery were common everywhere. The only hope of the poor rested with individual benefactors like Prince Rudolf, the Grand Duke of Gerolstein. Disguised merely as M. Gerolstein, he goes about giving aid only to those poor who despite adversity, have remained virtuous. Those who have turned criminal , he brings to justice for the punishment they deserve.
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality. Expressionism was developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War. It remained popular during the Weimar Republic, particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a wide range of the arts, including expressionist architecture, painting, literature, theatre, dance, film and music.
Educational technology is not new. Almost as long as there have been teachers, there have been instructional tools to help students learn. Clay slates, the abacus, pencils and pens, typewriters, overhead projectors, computers, and finally, the internet, mobile phones, and social networks- there has been an ever accelerating cycle of innovation in teaching tools, yet the classroom challenges have remained essentially the same: how do we ‘reach’ our students? How can we challenge them and motivate them to think for themselves? How can we use the tools at our disposal to improve the classroom experience?