characters convenience community

As music video director and VR entrepreneur Chris Milk has put it, VR is an “empathy machine.”

You’re thinking in terms of your you — past, present, and future — and you’re developing narratives, where I’m going to go to lunch when this is over or whatever it is. And those narratives are a form of self-reference. And that’s called — as I said I mean it’s also called the narrative mode network or the narrative network. And it’s the story of me. When you train people in MBSR, you find that another area of their cortex lights up more lateral after eight weeks of training in mindfulness. And that that area is associated with a region called the insula and that doesn’t have a linear, time-based narrative. It’s just the experiencing of the present moment in the body — breathing in, breathing out, awake, no narrative, no agenda. And the interesting thing — and this is the study — when they put people through eight weeks of MBSR, this narrative network decreases in activity and this experiential network increases in activity and they become uncoupled.

CREATORS AND DEVELOPERS GRAPPLE WITH NEW WAYS TO TELL STORIES IN THE RUSH TO SATE APPETITES FOR VR AND IMMERSIVE VIDEO.

Turn creative writing into a multiplayer game. Storium is a Web-based online game powered by your creativity. As you play, the game helps you create memorable characters and tell exciting, unpredictable stories. It even offers a library of interesting story ideas and tools to help you get started. You don’t have to be a great writer to play. Storium can help anyone unleash their imagination and tell a great story!

How do the photos used by development organisations affect perceptions of international development? How do agencies ensure that images preserve their subjects’ dignity? Has social media created new opportunities for self-representation, or just reinforced the use of outdated visual clichés? These are some of the questions addressed during last week’s #DevPix Twitter chat hosted by the Overseas Development Institute. The topic sparked a lively conversation…

Earlier this year, a group of organisations who work together on global equity issues asked a question: can the public conversation about global development be changed to foster a more positive understanding of the issues? To find a new approach, these organisations created The Narrative Project: a research and communications effort focused on changing the development narrative in the United Kingdom, United States, France and Germany. The user guide is designed to be an informative tool for communicators and advocates who want to apply The Narrative Project approach to their own messages and content.

Schultz writes: “Starbucks’ coffee is exceptional, yes, but emotional connection is our true value proposition. Starbucks is not a coffee company that serves people. It is a people company that serves coffee.”

According to a recent study of about 100 college students, some TV shows help viewers to become kinder and more generous toward people who are different from them — even if the show itself doesn’t directly address diversity. “After viewing meaningful entertainment, as opposed to more humorous entertainment, people were more likely to help in general, but also they were more likely to help someone who was different from them,” explained Erica Bailey, a mass communications doctoral student at Penn State and lead author of the study.

Infecting An Audience: Why Great Stories Spread.

"The Ward Game, an elaborate 30-day pervasive game that aims to teach Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to high school seniors"

"THE LEADER IN NARRATIVE BEST PRACTICES AND TEAM-BASED HEALTHCARE PROGRAMS Narrative Medicine fortifies clinical practice with the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness. Through narrative training, the Program in Narrative Medicine helps physicians, nurses, social workers, mental health professionals, chaplains, social workers, academics, and all those interested in the intersection between narrative and medicine improve the effectiveness of care by developing these skills with patients and colleagues. Our research and outreach missions are conceptualizing, evaluating, and spear-heading these ideas and practices nationally and internationally."

"Real-world personalized training is the key to engagement Our key to learner engagement has been the use of real-life stories told in real-life places. This strengthens relevance and motivation and demonstrates actual on-the-job benefits. Secondly we use interactive, branching narratives that show learners the consequences of their decisions – intrinsically motivating them through autonomy and providing multiple learning pathways. Third and finally our participatory experiences focus on doing rather than just knowing – making the learner an active player in their own personalized learning journey."