Dr. Carissa Baker – Storytelling for Spatial Narratives

We are excited to have young superstar, Carissa Baker, Assistant Professor of Theme Parks and Attraction Management at the University of Central Florida (UCF), join us as a Team Leader at the Ensō Education Institute.

Carissa wrote her doctoral dissertation on the power of theme parks for storytelling in 4 dimensional spaces. The goals of her dissertation were to determine how the narrative techniques and technologies utilized by theme parks have changed over time and to articulate the characteristics that define theme parks as a unique narrative medium.

We are interested in seeing what might be learned from theme parks to make learning environments more effective. What if schools engaged emotions, movement, sounds and sights in addition to our minds? What if schools were more like theme parks and less like factories or prisons? What if schools were the happiest places on Earth?

Join former Walt Disney Imagineer Brian Collins, Dr. Carissa Baker, University of Central Florida, and other instructors in an exploration of education as storytelling. Learn from experts in storytelling and creating interactive, spatial narratives, to transform education, schooling and learning for the 21st century. Imagine a future in which schools are the happiest places on Earth.

Join Dr. Carissa Baker, Brian Collins and other instructors in thinking about ways to revise educational approaches based on the principles of themed education design. Her workshops focus on what makes theme parks compelling and potentially transformative spaces. She highlights ways to use theme parks as a subject in the classroom and the potential of the theme park as a learning space. Her sessions conclude with a charrette focused on creating a model classroom, school or learning environment that applies the principles for developing transformative education, schooling and learning.

Learn how to enrich learning by designing 1D communicataion (lines of text and strings of numbers); 2D pages and screens; 3D objects and products; 4D spaces and places; and 5D interactions and experience design.