Month: March 2024

Script – 

The video opens with upbeat music playing in the background. Text overlay reads: “Welcome to our cooking tutorial: Hot Rasam Bowl

• There is no such thing as a lentil soup in India. It is always rasam. When you are sick you don’t get a bowl of chicken soup but a big hot steamy bowl of rasam with a big dollop of neii. My mom always claimed that if we drank one bowl of this soup every day, we would have no digestion issues. Now I’m not sure how credible that information is and I have never bothered googling it either.
• “Ingredients” Voiceover: “First, let’s gather our ingredients.

We need lentils obvious, onion, garlic, and tomato for the tempering we need cumin, mustard seeds garlic, black pepper, dried curry leaves chilli, salt pepper and chilli powder

Add ginger garlic paste to the lentils boil them until they are soft,

Mash them into a rough paste

Now in a separate bowl add oil, mustard seeds, cumin, and dried red chill. Wait for them to stutter, Now add onions tomato and the dry spice powders.

Add them and let it simmer.

A hot bowl of rasam is ready 

1) What is the learning purpose of your video?

The learning purpose of the video multifaceted

1. Recipe Sharing – The video teaches the viewers how to prep and make a dish called “Rasam”. This shows the ingredients you require and the cooking method. 
2. Cultural Awareness – As I share a story from my childhood and culture, this also emphasizes the importance of food in Indian culture.

Q2) Why is video a good medium for this learning purpose?

I feel like after going over the Mayer’s principles, I have realized that education and communication has a lot of depth. Video becomes a good medium for this learning purpose because it leverages Mayer’s principles of multimedia learning to enhance understanding and engagement. Through the integration of narration and demonstrations, it facilitates active processing by providing learners with multiple channels for processing information simultaneously. The use of real-world demonstration aligns with the coherence principle, ensuring that content remains focused and relevant.

Q3) Which of the principles we’ve covered this term (e.g., Mayer/Universal Design for Learning/Cognitive Load Theory) did you incorporate into your design and why?

While writing the script and storyboards, I incorporated principles from Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning to optimize the learning experience.

Mayer’s Personalization Principle: Research shows that people learn better when information is presented using conversational language, rather than more formal speech. In this video, I have used a more conversational tone as if I am having a conversation with a friend

Mayer’s segmenting principle –  

The video is short and segments into various parts like ingredients and methods.

 Merrill’s first principle- The video ends with a question asking the viewers to think about the connection of food to their culture. This engages the listener. as it asks them to consider alternatives

UDL Guidelines – The video has captions and transcripts 

These use a simple, sans serif font that’s easy to read.

Signaling principle – Using text overlay to indicate the beginning of a new segment helps learners to focus their attention.

Active Processing: Viewers actively engage with the information by visually identifying the ingredients.

Q4) What was challenging about capturing your own video?

The most challenging part for me was managing the camera angle. As I was shooting the video to just show my hands while cooking making a stand to hold the camera was very challenging. It was also hard to get the lighting right.

The selection of the recipe that I wanted to showcase and adding a cultural component without taking away from the recipe and finding that balance was also challenging.

Q5) What did you find easiest?

The easiest and most fun part was creating a working demonstration. I love cooking and being able to showcase that with the class was something that made me really happy. I also enjoyed writing a script that attempts to weave in a story to make the video interesting and engaging. Despite finding it challenging to find the right camera angle, I really enjoyed the process of figuring it out.

Q6) How would you approach capturing video differently next time?

Next time, I could borrow the camera from the library and improve the video quality, making the video much better.

Elaborating on the story component where I can talk to some of my friends from a similar cultural background to share stories could also help engage the videos and increase the educational value of the video further

Module Summary

In this module, we learned about how storytelling can be a crucial tool to improve engagement and how to create videos to effectively illustrates stories for learning purposes.

Storytelling as a way of transferring knowledge has been a practice in many cultures. For example in India, grandparents often recite stories to their grandkids. These stories often have an educational undertone and help kids learn morals and virtues

Understanding the neuroscience behind it has further help me to appreciate the value of stories as a tool.

Video format is key for story telling as it helps does not decrease from the

Meaningful Learning Experience 

I have attend various workshops and keynote speeches that have started with a personal story to make the speech more impactful. Using this teaching helps the speaker relate to the audience and humanizes him . However one particular learning experience stands out vividly in my memory is that of a leadership conference attended. The facilitator was a young women who lost one of her legs in a train accident. She then told the audience about her journey of overcoming adversity, leaning how to walk again and climbing mount Kilimanjaro – the highest Himalayan peak in India.

She described all parts of her journey not just the ones where she was happy but also talked about her struggle with her mental health. This painted a vivid picture of her own struggles and triumphs, weaving a narrative that resonated deeply with the audience. What made this experience impactful was the emotional connection established through storytelling. She also used pictures that she showed to the audiance appealed to multiple senses, engaging me on a profound level.

Reflecting on the storytelling techniques discussed this week, I recognized the use of metaphor, vivid imagery and personal anecdotes to evoke sensory experiences and make her story relatable and memorable.

Seven Storytelling Techniques Used by the Most Inspiring TED Presenters, 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her talk presented the idea of “The Danger of a Single Story”. 

She shared her cultural InSite and anecdotes to focus that human experiences are diverse and complex. She also asked audience questions that made them think about their own biases this helped capture the audience and also prompted them to reflect increasing engagement. I found to be a really important tool that helped the audience listen and made her speech more meaningful .

 Own Storytelling abilities

Reflecting on my own storytelling practices, I realize that I am not a very good storyteller. Most of my stories are filledd with dry facts and I do no incorporate elements such as vivid imagery and personal anecdotes to engage listeners. Adding these would help people relate better and empathize with me.

As I rely more on logic I am able to structure my story well and creating coherent storylines. Moving forward, I aim to focus on refining these aspects to enhance the impact of my narratives.

Exploring Branched Narratives

The concept of branched narratives, has always excited me. As I play numerous real-life stimulations and adventure games such as Geinshen, I am familiar with the concept. One has to make decisions in the game that affects the path they take and their future choices.

Using this concept in story telling could provide a better immersive experience to the audience where they can explore multiple pathways and outcomes. 

Here is the link to my story -https://shradhananda11.github.io/questgame/Quest.html