Visualize your story

Learning objectives and the skills developed

To understand the importance of visualization in communication
To let the participants to know each other better.

When to use it?

At the beginning, getting to know each other

Materials:

Storyboard (see the appendix) print outs or A4 sheets

Preparation:

For each participant, make one copy of the storyboard, which is attached in the appendix.
Alternatively take A4 sheets according to number of participants.
Make sure all participants have pen or pencil to draw. In case, take a number of pen/pencil with you.
Read the info box about visualization and story board (info box 1a-1b).

Presentation:

Ask participants how much they know about the people in the classroom. Follow up with further questions such as how do they learn about personal information about other people, what is most permanent information about a person they get to know for the first time.
Tell them how visual elements in an information flow are more persistent than verbal and textual information by referring to the visualization theory part (x).
Then show them the story board and how it used in storytelling and different sectors.
Hand out one storyboard to each participant and tell them to draw pictures for each frames describing their life, hobbies and anything to share about themselves.
The participants can use one to three keywords for each frame to support the information in the frames.
Let them work on this for up to 20 minutes.
Then ask the participants to write their name on the storyboard and exchange it with the next person sitting beside her/him.
Give them another 5 minutes to study the frames to understand the story in it.
Then ask each participant to introduce/present the life of the person based on the storyboard they study.
After the presentation, ask the real owner of the storyboard whether she/he verifies the story.
Then invite the participants to discuss how useful it was to get to know a person with visual clues compared to verbal/textual introduction.

Follow up questions:

What was the most enjoyable part about storyboard?
How easier or more difficult is it to know about people with this method compared to reading or listening to them?

Possible Variations:

You can do the storyboarding with only pictures by dropping out keywords to increase the challenge.