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Tag: Storytelling

Wattpad’s New Video App, Raccoon, Launches in the US Today

Published on August 29, 2017 | In Blog, News | 0 Comment

In Feature Articles by Porter Anderson August 25, 2017

Moving beyond written stories, Wattpad’s Raccoon video storytelling app encourages storytelling in the context of selfie-video, close to the hearts of YouTube fans.

Selfies on Steroids

At last weekend’s Writer’s Digest Annual Conference in New York, two 40-something authors were overheard between sessions talking about Toronto-based Wattpad. They’d just attended a session in which the service was discussed.

“I just found out Wattpad has a lot of millennial readers,” one said.

“Yeah,” said the other writer, “and it’s all about serials,” said the other. “Did you know that?”

Such is the peculiar, almost cult-like progress of the world’s largest reading and writing platform. Wattpad’s massive reach has grown even larger in its deals with major traditional publishers such as Hachette in France.

Today, the Canadian company’s most active market, the US, gets access to Raccoon, a new video app for storytelling. Raccoon? Think raconteur, we were told when Publishing Perspectives asked. “And it’s also a nod to Wattpad’s homebase in Toronto,” a spokesperson told us, “which is known for its raccoons.”

Wattpad co-founder (with Allen Lau) Ivan Yuen tells us, “Raccoon’s focus is to deliver real stories from real people, and it’s a critical step forward in realizing Wattpad’s vision to connect and entertain the world through stories.

“As we look to the future of storytelling,” he says, “it’s clear that video will play an important role—digital video audiences are predicted [by eMarketer digital research] to reach 2.15 billion this year alone.”

Raccoon, for iOS and Android, is the most serious leap yet for the operation into visual storytelling. While writing and words have been at the heart of the Wattpad universe to date, Raccoon lets users create and share videos to tell their own stories. These are vertical selfie videos with which users express what Wattpad calls “their genuine selves, allowing them to make authentic connections with others.”

Raccoon is expected to be adding themes and prompts that users can deploy to enhance and embellish the stories they create in and about their own lives and worlds.

Wattpad tell Publishing Perspectives that in an early rollout in Canada, the service picked up fast traction in storytelling focused around four areas:

  • Travel
  • Parenting
  • Childhood stories (“millennial memoir,” you read it here first)
  • Personal challenges

In that last category, personal challenges, we see another interesting potential convergence in the offing. Many Wattpad fans are also major consumers of YouTube, and the typical YouTube star is a popular performer of what amounts to selfie videos—exactly the medium that Wattpad is asking its users to incorporate into their own storytelling with Raccoon. Expect the Wattpad-YouTube axis to heat up quickly.

In their contacts this week with journalists about Raccoon, Wattpad’s spokespeople refer to the new app as “a major foray into nonfiction storytelling.”

“By providing a platform where people can experiment with new forms of short-form video storytelling,” says Yuen, “Raccoon creates authentic connections between storytellers and their audiences, and cultivates a safe space for people to tell stories around shared experiences.”

Storytelling as Story-Showing
“It’s clear that video will play an important role—digital video audiences are predicted to reach 2.15 billion this year alone.”Ivan Yuen

Unlike our wide-eyed authors at the conference, Publishing Perspectives readers know a great deal about Wattpad.

And its numbers tell an impressive story about Wattpad’s global success. UPDATE: A few hours after this story was published Wattpad sent us new numbers. These are freshly updated on August 25 at midday Eastern time:

  • More than 60 million active users monthly
  • More than 15.5 billion minutes spent monthly on the platform
  • More than 400 million uploads shared on the platform
  • More than 50 languages supported in stories and continual chatter between readers and the authors

At the moment, Wattpad spokespeople say they have no plan to attach a paid subscription to Raccoon, which is a departure from the model for their next-to-newest feature, Tap.

Tapping Deeper Into Mobile

Today’s US rollout of Raccoon follows the late-July activation of Wattpad’s Tap Originals, the enhanced chat-fiction functionality that lets users incorporate audio, photos, video, voice notes, and alternative ending options into their stories.

The initial Tap app from Wattpad was released in February, and it vies in the App Store with such services as Hooked and Yarn. Tap Originals are available in 10 or more languages. And Tap has an optional subscription model attached to it, the latest move in Wattpad’s gradual build up of revenue streams. A spokesperson for the company gives us a quick explanation of out the Tap subscription options work.

From Wattpad’s Raccoon

Each user has a certain amount of taps loaded onto their account. You tap to get a new installment of a texted story. Once your account’s taps are used up, you need to reload them. Taps are reloaded after a certain period of time passes, or if the user purchases a subscription to Tap Premium. So Tap Premium is the way to get your story’s next increments without waiting. By subscribing to Tap Premium, users receive unlimited taps to power through their stories without interruption.

There are three Tap Premium subscription packages, and each package offers unlimited taps:

  • US$2.99 per week
  • US$7.99 per month
  • US$39.99 per year

If you find it tricky to keep up with the accelerating arrival of new wrinkles in Wattpad’s offering, keep in mind that the core concept has to do with closing the gap between creator and observer–between writer and reader.

What these new apps–Tap and Raccoon–are doing is capitalizing on what Wattpad’s creators at WP Technology Inc. in Toronto have learned over the years: access is the key. Readers of all ages, not just millennials, are using various social media to communicate with authors, entertainers, composers, choreographers, sculptors, designers, you name it, in ways they could never do in the past. What the platform’s first decade confirmed was that letting readers interact with their favorite writers meant that a lucrative bond could be nurtured between maker and consumer.

And now that Wattpadders can get their paws on Raccoon, those phones have just become an even smarter way for publishers to think about reaching readers.


Wattpad’s Ashleigh Gardner and Hachette Romans’ Cécile Terouanne will be in conversation with Publishing Perspectives at Frankfurt Book Fair’s Business Club on how publishers can work with the platform. The session is at 2 p.m. on Thursday, October 12.

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Storytelling and language development

Published on March 6, 2017 | In Blog, For Parents and Teachers | 0 Comment

by Janni Wallin

March 25, 2015

This degree project represents a partial collaboration between Johanna Treble-Read and JanniWallin (the current author). We have chosen to partly write this degree project together but we have collaborated throughout the whole process. Together we have discussed different texts that we have read but we have written two separate degree projects. Johanna's main topic is Swedish and
mine is English. My focus has been on language development
as both an ESL and L1 perspective. Despite our collaboration we have decided to write in I form to make it easier for the reader.
 
Abstract:  The use of Storytelling as a teaching method is on the rise. Yet, not much is known about how the approach affects language development in a foreign language classroom environment. First I use interviews to examine teacher perceptions and experiences about Storytelling and its effect on language development across a variety of native language teaching contexts. I will also investigate how Storytelling is used and its effects in an ESL (English as a second language) context. Both cases are examined from both teacher directed Storytelling and student directed Storytelling perspectives. My results suggest that teachers have a positive attitude towards Storytelling since they experience that their students benefit from this in their language development and overall motivation in school.
Find the document here. 
 
Table of Contents
Introduction   6
Purpose and research question   8
Literature Review   9
Experimental evidence for the effectiveness of Storytelling   12
Methodology   14
Participants    14
Materials   15
Procedure   15
Result and discussion   16
Language development through Storytelling   16
Storytelling through reading out loud   18
Adapted Storytelling   19
ESL and Storytelling   21
References   28
 
 

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Storytelling as a Strategy to Increase Oral Language Proficiency of Second Language Learners, Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute

Published on March 6, 2017 | In Blog, For Parents and Teachers | 0 Comment

by Kathleen Massa

I am writing this unit because of the desperate need for more oral language instruction. Today more than ever students are coming into school with insufficient language knowledge. Our students’ oral language skills are not developed enough to support the curriculum and objectives we teachers are pushing so hard. They require formal language instruction before they can be expected to become fluent readers, writers, and thinkers.

This unit is a focused, intensive unit on storytelling. Storytelling is the strategy I use to help obtain oral language proficiency among second language learners and students with deficient language skills. Storytelling gives the students the daily practice they need in order to advance their language skills. This unit will help the students understand how telling stories and story structure enable them to express themselves more clearly. The students will also learn through storytelling that their ability to listen to others will increase, expanding both their vocabulary, knowledge base and sentence structure.

Because this unit is focused on second language learners, my partner teacher who teaches the Spanish component will be working with the students who are learning Spanish as their second language, while I am working with the students who are learning English as their second language.

Contents of Curriculum Unit 08.02.01:  Four Weeks of Daily Lesson Plans

  • Preface
  • Background
  • Oral Language
  • Storytelling
  • Goals and Objectives
  • Strategies
  • Connecticut Literacy Standards
  • Resources

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Folktales—The Mirror of Humanity, a curriculum unit from Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute

Published on March 5, 2017 | In Blog, For Parents and Teachers | 0 Comment

One of the most stimulating and enjoyable ways of exploring ourselves and people of differing backgrounds is through folktales. Nowhere else can we find the insight and understanding that tales invariably provide for us. The title of this unit suggests that folktales are a mirror. When we look inside of this mirror we see ourselves; who we are, who we have been. The recurring themes and motifs that are in stories passed along through the oral tradition are not there coincidentally. They are there because they are among the primary concerns and preoccupations we have as human beings. As a teacher and storyteller, I have found in folktales a clearer sense of my self worth and an understanding of others. I have seen my personal hopes and fears mirrored in stories from many cultures. I appreciate more the common ground upon which we all stand as human beings.

My goal is to provide for teachers and students a similar path of discovery. This unit gives order to that process. The first section discusses and defines the function of folktales, emphasizing how they reflect the collective nature of our human psyche and consciousness. Next, I give strategies for preparing and acclimating your class to storytelling and folktales. I have included ideas of how you, as a teacher and beginning storyteller, might approach storytelling yourself. The unit schedule suggests a time table you may want to follow as you explore the folktales in the next section. Here, I discuss the function of tales within the West African, Haitian, and African American traditions. From each of these cultures I have selected at least two stories to explore in detail.

Throughout the unit you will find an array of activities and exercises that relate to the stories and goals presented. It is my hope that, upon completing this unit, both teacher and student will have rediscovered the value of the oral tradition and that all will have had ample opportunity to participate by collecting and telling their own folktales!

(Recommended for Drama/Theater, Language Arts, Social Studies, and English; Grades 4-8)

Contents of Curriculum Unit 93.02.02 by Synia Carroll -McQuillan

  • Introductory Discussion
  • Strategies
  • Unit Schedule
  • The Stories
  • Stories From The African Tradition
  • Anansi And Osun The Elephant (Anansi Goes Hunting) - Prep Activities
  • Anansi And The Hat Shaking Dance - Prep Activities
  • A Bad Habit - Prep Activities
  • Haitian Folktales
  • Cat’s Baptism - Prep Activities
  • The Name - Prep Activities
  • African American Folktales
  • He Lion - Prep Activities
  • Appendix A
  • The Talking Cooter - Prep Activities
  • Appendix B

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