In a TMS classroom, storytelling is the gateway for developing skills of critical thinking, collaborative problem solving, and digital media production.
Through TMS digital storytelling curriculum, youth produce media that is culturally relevant to their community and educational for their peers around the world. In TMS student programs, youth become change-makers and global citizens by raising awareness, taking action and exchanging stories locally and globally. In TMS professional development programs, educators learn to understand and facilitate student-centered workshops that are focused on implementing a researched, project based curriculum.
The Modern Story supports a Teaching Fellowship program that recruits dynamic college graduates to teach intensive technology and storytelling workshops for students and educators. To date, TMS has run workshops in Hyderabad, Tamil Nadu, San Francisco and Boston. Classroom exchanges have occurred between TMS students in India and students from several schools around the U.S.
Our vision is to thread this dialogue across the globe. Every student actively participating to her education, her community, her world.
We envision a network of classrooms around the world in which project based learning, cross-cultural communication, and the development of 21st Century skills are a part of every student’s educational experience. In TMS workshops around the world, youth create multimedia stories of cultural relevance and participate in a global dialogue through digitally interconnected classrooms. Students learn how to use various technologies to share narratives of their lives and communities and to authentically learn about students across the world.
What does a TMS global dialogue look like?
TMS students in South Africa research and produce Oral History Stories about their relatives’ lives during Apartheid, and TMS students in India respond with stories about their relatives’ experiences during India’s Independence. TMS educators facilitate the process of producing and understanding the stories through historical research, contextualization, comparison and personal reflection. What are the results? Through youth produced media, students learn firsthand about historical and contemporary issues through listening, watching and responding to their peers’ projects around the globe.
To enhance teacher professional development on a global scale, we aim to create a 21st century global platform that leverages the videos and written narratives produced by students to create lesson plans that are utilized in classrooms around the world. Using this student generated curriculum, educators can engage students with other cultures in a deeper and more engaging way. We offer workshops for educators who seek to modernize their curriculum and to reconfigure the position of instructor to facilitator in a 21st century classroom in order to empower the student and place her at the center of her education.
The Modern Story Experience
Transforming the educational experience of youth: TMS students articulate their ideas and amplify their voices through access to media production tools and the Internet. Through project based learning, they become digitally literate, build their critical thinking skills and become active leaders and global citizens.
Offering authentic teaching experiences: Our Teaching Fellows are empowered and trained to teach intensive technology and storytelling workshops while immersing themselves in and learning from the communities of their students. Fellows are learners, leaders and changemakers who become part of a global network of like-minded educators and activists.
Promoting global dialogue: Students and educators across the world engage in creating and exchanging multimedia projects between their classrooms about globally relevant historical and contemporary issues. Educators utilize youth produced media to facilitate learning about other cultures and a globally interconnected 21st century world.