I mentioned in my last post that I put energy into breaking down the interviews into three separate groups of responses. After I had completed this process the edited footage was already starting to tell the story of just who iMET graduate students are, what they do and why they do it, the challenges each faces, and the rewards of persistence in the program. The story they had shared with me was so close to my own story that I chose to acknowledge the parallels in the final cut instead of directly linking them. I added an opening narration and closing narration that interconnected their journey with my own. This approach results in giving a voice to my own iMET journey while still celebrating cohort 13’s digital story. Even though I had started production before clarifying my story core it was the story core in the end that allowed me to organize the footage in a way the told my past and future iMET journey. The completed project is posted below.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Blog #8 Final Video “iMET JOURNEY”
I mentioned in my last post that I put energy into breaking down the interviews into three separate groups of responses. After I had completed this process the edited footage was already starting to tell the story of just who iMET graduate students are, what they do and why they do it, the challenges each faces, and the rewards of persistence in the program. The story they had shared with me was so close to my own story that I chose to acknowledge the parallels in the final cut instead of directly linking them. I added an opening narration and closing narration that interconnected their journey with my own. This approach results in giving a voice to my own iMET journey while still celebrating cohort 13’s digital story. Even though I had started production before clarifying my story core it was the story core in the end that allowed me to organize the footage in a way the told my past and future iMET journey. The completed project is posted below.
Blog #7 “Breaking All the Rules” [video 4]
My final video project takes Ohler’s recommendations of defining a story core and then mapping the story before shooting and throws it out the window. With permission I changed my EDTE 286 project from a story about my culminating proposal and turned it into an event documentary. With no idea of what to expect on the night of the graduate student poster presentations, I gathered my video equipment and went to go shoot footage of the projects and iMET students.
As I captured cohort 13’s comments about their experience in iMET over the last two years I began to see parallels in my own experience. On the way home from the event I started defining the story core and story map. Using my cellphone, I voice recorded my ideas on the way home. My video would be a story about the universal challenges and rewards of participating in the iMET program.
The map I produce over the next couple of days was based on Joseph Cambell’s “The Hero’s Journey” archetype. Below is a planning sheet I filled out while trying to conceptualize how the story might play out.
When I started roughing out a story board on PowerPoint the choices I made were driven by the idea that I would cut back and forth between the student interviews and my own experiences.
Building the story board revealed to me the difficulty of this approach and so I decided to cut the interviews into three distinct sets of responses that related who the cohort participates were and what they had been doing, the challenges and setbacks they had faced, and finally what the rewards of the process had been. I thought I would figure out how to cut my experiences in later. What actually happened was so more exciting and I will share the results in my next blog # 8.
Friday, May 4, 2012
DV Project #3 "How to Use Audacity to Record YouTube Audio "
I tried to tell a story of how I copy music from youtube.com
when I need a background song or audio clip for a digital movie. The video presents the steps in order, but
also shows me doing the prescribed work.
It took about 3 hours to make this video. I had to shoot the steps over multiple takes
so that I had enough footage to edit together different angles. I feel that the audio matched up nice and
added to the story being that it was the same clip in the examples. For the close up shots of my computer screen
I used a free screen capture tool called CamStudio. Also featured in this video is Audacity,
which to this day it still amazes me that the program is free to use.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Chapter 13 Reflection "The Digital Storytelling Toolbox: The Tools Teachers and Students Need to Tell Digital Stories"
Where was Ohler in 2007 when I started teaching my first media class? I could have used every word of advice in chapter 13 of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom. The lesson that stings the most, “Don’t by on the leading edge.” (Location 2208) After tinkering with a product called Adobe Visual Communicator I convince my principal to purchase a class set of the software. Visual Communicator seemed like the perfect solution to create well voiced digital stories, a daily news broadcast, and a slew of other engaging projects. The software even had other teachers using it in their classrooms, and some were willing to mentor newbies like myself. It was all so promising. Then the glitches started, followed by system crashes—one step forward and three steps back became the motto of my media classroom. My students learned how to work around bugs in the software instead of focusing on how to tell stories well. Adobe was in the dark on how to help, being that the product had been acquired from another company. To this day they still sale the software program and to this day people can still be found on Adobe’s forum begging for help or SCREAMING about the lack of support. In the end, I feel that the software disrupted learning, sunk my credibility as a technology teacher with my peers, and cost me hundreds of hours of wasted time. By the time I knew we had a problem, I should have started having my students just use what we had for free. In time Microsoft Movie Maker and Photo Story, both free programs for Window's users, ended up being the backbone of the class.
Ohler, J. (2008). Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy,
Learning, and Creativity [Kindle DX version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Ch.12 Reflection "The Media Production Process, Phases II-V: From Preparation to Performance"
I have not had much success with peer feedback as part of traditional story telling or digital story telling. There are a variety of evaluation checklists and rubrics one can find if they dive into the deep waters of Google, but these tools for the most part do not promote critical thinking. Ohler encourages the practice of peer reviews, but does not offer many guiding ideas to facilitate such collaboration. "Having students show their work in progress can be very helpful. How teachers approach this depends on a number of factors, including class size, structure, and the purpose of the story-telling project."(Location 1990) I’m thinking that a process that uses writing, inquiry, and collaboration may be successful when guiding students to provide feedback on their video projects. One resource I have found is a class Wiki for LIS 5313: Digital Media: Concepts & Production. The developer of that site has included several guiding topics to consider when students give each other feedback. The rigor of these questions could promote deep conversations between students about the process and purpose of digital story telling.
Ohler, J. (2008). Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy,
Learning, and Creativity [Kindle DX version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
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