Activity 4:Playing a story
Truth, naked and cold, had been turned away from every door in the village. Her nakedness frightened the people. When Parable found her she was huddled in a corner, shivering and hungry. Taking pity on her, Parable gathered her up and took her home. There, she dressed Truth in story, warmed her, and sent her out again. Clothed in story, Truth knocked again at the villager’s doors and was readily welcomed into the people’s houses. They invited her to eat at their table and warm herself by their fire.
Jewish teaching story
Stories, like games, have been here for a while as forms of human entertainment. From their first appearance as picture stories on the cave walls of pre-historic men to the ever present fairy tales that parents and grandparents tell their youngsters, stories have taken many shapes and sizes and they have served many purposes. Evidently, everyone likes to tell, read, listen to a good story.
Stories, like games, were invented not only to entertain people but also to help them understand their world better. “…[storytelling] promises a kind of holistic view of the world: […] we use narratives to make sense of our lives, to process information” (Juul, para. 7). Stories helped people overcome moods, characters, wars, natural disasters. Stories were attentively heard by kings and queens, rich and poor, young and old because they have this magic power to explain everything. “A good story simplifies our world into something we can understand” (Simmons, 2000:30).
Stories and games were also used to help people maintain the aspects of their lives that were and are still considered important: language, ethics, customs, culture. That is, they have been used as a “pedagogical tool” (Τζήκα, Τσιώνας, 2010, Mood, Sprecht, 1954)), because they both share this disarming ability to be accepted by all the participants, to engage everyone to their environment, to persuade, to show what is right and what is wrong, who is bad and who is good, what they should do and what they should avoid. Ideas like democracy, tyranny, love, hate, logic, absurdity have been promoted and condemned in thousands of stories throughout the years. Roles like the good, the bad, the triumphant winner, the dignified loser, the censurable cheater have been undertaken by thousands of players worldwide.
What is more, both stories and games help people develop and exercise basic functional and mental skills like speaking, listening, moving, observing, memorizing, following instructions, reasoning, leading, testing trial and error, creating rules, solving problems (Plummer, 2009, Τζήκα, Τσιώνας 2010). That is why they have both been widely used in education as teaching tools. One of the most effective of these tools is their combination: stories like games or game stories where “two or more persons collaborate on telling a spontaneous story” (Wikipedia.org). They can cover a vast area of knowledge and they come up in a variety of activities: Liar-liar, Silly sentences, Group-circle story, Storytelling on long roll of paper, Continuing story. They even exist in the form of board games like The Storymatic Kids, Rory’s Story Cubes, Story Play Cards.
Good stories, like good games have their own style since it is not enough to know what to say but to “know how to say it” (Freese, 1926: xl). That is why good stories, like good games are “subject[s] to their own rules” (Fuller, 2000:44). The participants whether storytellers or players agree upon them. Good stories and good games have their own place and time, they combine elements of truth, elements of fiction and elements of chance and even though they cannot definitely define their outcome every time, they most certainly can ensure personal enjoyment.
LIST OF REFERENCES
BOOKS
Freese, John, Henry, The Art of Rhetoric by Aristotle, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1926
Fuller, Steve, Thomas Kuhn: A philosophical history of our times, University of Chicago, Chicago, 2000
Plummer Deborah, Παιχνίδια διαχείρισης θυμού για παιδιά, εκδόσεις Πατάκη, Αθήνα, 2009
Simmons, Annette, The Story Factor: Secrets of Influence from the Art of Storytelling, Pegasus, 2000
Τζήκα, Χρυσή, Τσιώνας, Γιώργος, Παιχνίδια του παππού και της γιαγιάς, Grafo Α.Ε., Θεσσαλονίκη, 2010
ARTICLES
Jesper, Juul, “Games Telling Stories – A brief note on games and narratives” found in www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts, accessed on 1.11.2016
Mood, A., M., & Spercht, R. D., “Gaming as a technique of Analysis” Rand Corp. 1954, found in www.instituteofplay.org, accessed on 1.11.2016
OTHER SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org
Dear students, use this padlet to upload your game-related story. Use your imagination and create a story that has to do with a game and / or that it is inspired by a game or both. If you think that Storybird is too difficult, you can use text and pictures anyway you can.
We are looking forward to reading your play-stories !
Your teachers
Jewish teaching story
Stories, like games, have been here for a while as forms of human entertainment. From their first appearance as picture stories on the cave walls of pre-historic men to the ever present fairy tales that parents and grandparents tell their youngsters, stories have taken many shapes and sizes and they have served many purposes. Evidently, everyone likes to tell, read, listen to a good story.
Stories, like games, were invented not only to entertain people but also to help them understand their world better. “…[storytelling] promises a kind of holistic view of the world: […] we use narratives to make sense of our lives, to process information” (Juul, para. 7). Stories helped people overcome moods, characters, wars, natural disasters. Stories were attentively heard by kings and queens, rich and poor, young and old because they have this magic power to explain everything. “A good story simplifies our world into something we can understand” (Simmons, 2000:30).
Stories and games were also used to help people maintain the aspects of their lives that were and are still considered important: language, ethics, customs, culture. That is, they have been used as a “pedagogical tool” (Τζήκα, Τσιώνας, 2010, Mood, Sprecht, 1954)), because they both share this disarming ability to be accepted by all the participants, to engage everyone to their environment, to persuade, to show what is right and what is wrong, who is bad and who is good, what they should do and what they should avoid. Ideas like democracy, tyranny, love, hate, logic, absurdity have been promoted and condemned in thousands of stories throughout the years. Roles like the good, the bad, the triumphant winner, the dignified loser, the censurable cheater have been undertaken by thousands of players worldwide.
What is more, both stories and games help people develop and exercise basic functional and mental skills like speaking, listening, moving, observing, memorizing, following instructions, reasoning, leading, testing trial and error, creating rules, solving problems (Plummer, 2009, Τζήκα, Τσιώνας 2010). That is why they have both been widely used in education as teaching tools. One of the most effective of these tools is their combination: stories like games or game stories where “two or more persons collaborate on telling a spontaneous story” (Wikipedia.org). They can cover a vast area of knowledge and they come up in a variety of activities: Liar-liar, Silly sentences, Group-circle story, Storytelling on long roll of paper, Continuing story. They even exist in the form of board games like The Storymatic Kids, Rory’s Story Cubes, Story Play Cards.
Good stories, like good games have their own style since it is not enough to know what to say but to “know how to say it” (Freese, 1926: xl). That is why good stories, like good games are “subject[s] to their own rules” (Fuller, 2000:44). The participants whether storytellers or players agree upon them. Good stories and good games have their own place and time, they combine elements of truth, elements of fiction and elements of chance and even though they cannot definitely define their outcome every time, they most certainly can ensure personal enjoyment.
LIST OF REFERENCES
BOOKS
Freese, John, Henry, The Art of Rhetoric by Aristotle, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1926
Fuller, Steve, Thomas Kuhn: A philosophical history of our times, University of Chicago, Chicago, 2000
Plummer Deborah, Παιχνίδια διαχείρισης θυμού για παιδιά, εκδόσεις Πατάκη, Αθήνα, 2009
Simmons, Annette, The Story Factor: Secrets of Influence from the Art of Storytelling, Pegasus, 2000
Τζήκα, Χρυσή, Τσιώνας, Γιώργος, Παιχνίδια του παππού και της γιαγιάς, Grafo Α.Ε., Θεσσαλονίκη, 2010
ARTICLES
Jesper, Juul, “Games Telling Stories – A brief note on games and narratives” found in www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts, accessed on 1.11.2016
Mood, A., M., & Spercht, R. D., “Gaming as a technique of Analysis” Rand Corp. 1954, found in www.instituteofplay.org, accessed on 1.11.2016
OTHER SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org
Dear students, use this padlet to upload your game-related story. Use your imagination and create a story that has to do with a game and / or that it is inspired by a game or both. If you think that Storybird is too difficult, you can use text and pictures anyway you can.
We are looking forward to reading your play-stories !
Your teachers