STORYVALUES

January 2010

The World’s Wisdom for Today’s Education

Celebrating
diversity, learning
shared positive
values, building
strong
communities and
safe learning
environments.
SPREADING our WINGS in 2010
Exciting New Developments and Added Features
The coming weeks will see
many exciting new Storyvalues
features, all of which will be
available to licensed users of the
Storyvalues Complete Package as
part of our standard upgrade
program.
Here is a brief summary of
what we’ve been working on over
the winter holiday break:
Tutorial Podcasts:
‘The Art of Storytelling’
A ten-part series designed to
teach educators all they need to
know to confidently tell stories in
classrooms, libraries and schools.
Throughout the series, educators
can expect to gain real, practical
expertise in the art of storytelling.
Each video runs between 2
and five minutes in length,
offering insight into such topics as
How Storytelling Can Enhance
the Classroom Experience,
Storytelling Techniques for
Better Classroom
Communication, How to
Prepare A Story, plus many
others.
Also in production is a
wonderful series of ‘Storycasts’;
short vignette stories that run
between one and three minutes in
length.
These will be offered as
‘bonus material’ for license
holders, and will be great for
visual learners and ideal for the
new ‘Smart Boards’ that are now
placed in many schools.
The coming year will see
many more developments as well.
We hope to expand our online
community, and we are in
preliminary planning stage for an
online gallery featuring work done
by students inspired by
Storyvalues.
In the past year we have been
amazed at some of the creative
ways educators and students have
been using our materials, and we
hope to be able to share some of
this work with the ever growing
Storyvalues community of schools
in 2010!

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 2009: A Year of Achievement
STORYVALUES January 2010

A Few Highlights from Our Year

2009 was an amazing year of growth and
achievement for Storyvalues. It was the year we
achieved approval from Curriculum Services
Canada as a recommended resource for Character
Education. CSC is the standard bearer for
educational resources, and it’s rigorous review
process ensures that all approved resources meet the
highest standards. The online CSC review can be
found at: http://www.curriculum.org/csc/
resources/storyvalues.shtml.
2009 also saw the development of four new
programs: Foundations of Multiculturalism,
Common Ground Bullying Prevention,
Elements of Our Environment and Family
Storyvalues. Taken together, Storyvalues now
presents a unique integrated package of online
resources that speak to some of the most important
aspects of modern education.
In October we introduced Storyvalues to the
international community at the Character
Education Partnership conference in
Washington, DC. Our workshop, ‘Interactive
Storytelling for Character Development and
Citizenship’ was ranked as the best of the
conference by many who attended. This workshop
essentially mirrored the support sessions we offer our
district and regional subscribers.
We also had the opportunity meet with many
great educational leaders from around the world,
and are thrilled to be in negotiations with major
“Storyvalues offers a distinctive
program that allows educators to
integrate multicultural folktales into the
curriculum through the use of
storytelling. By providing a wide range
of folktales from around the world,
students and teachers are able to
explore various concepts through
auditory experiences...and related
instructional content.”
School Library Journal
districts and regions in the US and abroad as a result
of our CEP conference participation.
In December, we were honored with a positive
review in the prestigious School Library Journal.
SLJ is the largest source of review information for
learning resources. Here is an excerpt from that
review: “Storyvalues offers a distinctive program that allows
educators to integrate multicultural folktales into the
curriculum through the use of storytelling. By providing a wide
range of folktales from around the world, students and teachers
are able to explore various concepts through auditory
experiences...and related instructional content.”
Great things are in store for 2010, and we look
forward to working closely with all of our license
holders to ensure their success in meeting their
educational and community building goals.

TDSB Storyvalues
Site Upgrades
As part of our regular
upgrade program, we
completely redesigned
the customized
Toronto District School
Board / Storyvalues
Character Education
website, improving
usability and visual
appeal. Here are a
couple of examples.

Storyvalues Character
Education and
Common Ground
Bullying Prevention
programs are licensed
for use in all 498 TDSB
primary schools.

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STORYVALUES January 2010
FOCUS On:
Support and Storytelling Workshops
The above pictures were taken at a recent all-day Educational
Storytelling workshop at the Jewish Family Services centre in
Carlsbad, California. JFS is a licensed user of Storyvalues, and
storyteller Cheryl Thornton delighted and engaged the
participants with a professional development session they will
not soon forget.
It’s not every day that seasoned professionals get to be
transformed into an Iguana, or a Monkey, or a mythological
being such as ‘The Boss of Fire’. Yet, that is precisely what
happened that day in Carlsbad.
These educators and social workers were thus introduced
to the dynamic, imaginative world of how storytelling can be
used to engage students and coworkers alike. A wonderful time
was had by all, and the techniques learned that day made a
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Engaging, Interactive professional
development sessions:
Support:
Using Storyvalues to It’s Fullest Potential
Workshops:
Educational Storytelling for the Modern
Classroom
Setting the Tone: How to Engage Students
Through Interactive Storytelling
Interactive Storytelling for Character
Education and Citizenship
Storyvalues featured storyteller
Cheryl Thornton, MFA has
performed across North America,
training educators in how
educational storytelling can be
used in schools, libraries and
classrooms.
huge positive impact on the working life at JFS that is still
talked about to this day.
Storyvalues support sessions are available to all
regional and district license holders, and are a great
way to get the most from the Storyvalues programs.
More than that, however these engaging sessions open up the
lines of communication and often serve as a clearing house for
new ideas to be shared among the participating educators,
allowing everyone to ‘get on the same page’ with board and
provincial initiatives like inclusive education, bullying
prevention and character education.
The sessions are also great fun, and a prime opportunity
for participants to free their inner mythological characters!
STORYVALUES January 2010
Storyvalues Educator
Case Study
Lisa McDonald, Toronto
Lisa McDonald is one of those
educators that can really make a
positive difference in a young person’s
life.
She used the Storyvalues
Character Education program as an
inspiration for an extended multi-
media project for her grade 5 class.
Using Storyvalues as a model, she
assigned each student with the task of
writing their own story about the
character attribute, ‘Honesty.'
After the writing was completed
for each student’s story, they set about
to create recordings, often using “Media is becoming more and more relevant to all parts of
musical backgrounds found online to the curriculum... These are the tools that kids are going to
accompany their narratives. need in the future. There is a learning elements that is really
Each student was further significant, and teachers want to be a part of it.”
instructed to create illustrations for
their stories. The resulting artwork is
Lisa McDonald, Teacher / Librarian
stunning, and a testament to how
stories inspire the imagination and
creativity of students.
Lisa’s students were justifiably very new to Canada and use English as a
The artwork was scanned into the
proud of their accomplishments, and second language, thus demonstrating
class computer. Each student then
they were thrilled to see their work online how Storyvalues can be helpful for ELL
assembled the artwork, along with the
and available to the general public. students (as noted by Curriclum Services
narratives and music into ‘e-booklets’,
Each of them is now a ‘published Canada).
using commonly available software found author,' and the familiarity they now have Lisa McDonald’s ingenuity and
online. with current media technology will serve creativity is an inspiration to us as we
As a final step, all the e-books were them very well as they mature into continue to develop and refine
uploaded to a class ‘wiki’ web page, adulthood in the ‘age of information Storyvalues. In the coming months we
viewable by the general public. technology.' will highlight other amazing educators
Here is the web address for this
Lisa’s achievements with her grade 5 and the creative ways they are using
wonderful project:
class are made all the more poignant by Storyvalues in classrooms, libraries and
www.oakridgestoryvalues.pbworks.com
the fact that many of her students are schools, so stay tuned!

enhancing software allows individuals to

The Time is Right
For Eco-Friendly
Resources
Every day we seem to hear more bad
news about the state of the environment,
to accompany the good news about how
modern technology can be used to help
create a more sustainable environment.
There is no question that computers
and interactive use of the internet will be
fundamental aspects of future education.
These tools have revolutionized the way
we think; facts are more easily obtained
than at any time in history, and creative
record music, edit video and create
digital art that can be seen by millions at
the click of the upload button.
The ‘old school’ model of quickly
obsolete paper textbooks is quickly giving
way to banks of computers accessing
‘virtual’ information that can be easily
updated and kept current, all with
virtually no waste.
Storyvalues is proud to be at the
forefront of this new, very positive trend
by providing resources that allow schools
to become more ‘eco-responsible’. Here’s
to a sustainable future!