Here’s an interesting idea. Gardner Campbell (Baylor University) asked his new media studies students to tell a story in five frames (uploaded to a group on Flickr). The resulting student projects are really quite clever and intriguing.
What biology story could your students tell in five frames? Or ten? What could we learn about what they know (and how they feel about what they know) from their visual stories – and also from the storyboards they create to plan those stories? Might be a fun project to try?
Visual story telling would be a great way to see how the students interpret biology. The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” really applies here. It will force the students to use a totally different way of thinking than they are used to because they have to illustrate their thoughts without using words. This can actually end up being quite a challenge since as human beings we are so used to just saying what we want to say, but with this activity, everything will be up to interpretation. The whole point that the student is trying to get across may not be very obvious and it will ultimately be up to the viewer to decide what they think the pictures are trying to say.
Exactly right, pepperdg. And what an interesting idea to get students to comment on each other’s visual stories! That would add a further dimension to the whole thing.