So this week in school, we have been doing a lot with "digital storytelling". What is digital storytelling do you ask? Well, it is quite frankly exactly what it sounds like. Using digital technology to tell a story. In order to do this, we have been creating many mini projects in class including videos and picture editing. The first mini project we had to do was create a video using our own personal photos. Being someone who loves to travel, I decided to make mine using pictures of many trips that me and my boyfriend had been on. Most of these were pictures of New York, Calgary, Las Vegas, Boston and Washington. The program that most of us used to create our videos was Animoto. I highly recommend this site! It was so simple to use as it was similar to that "click-drag-and-drop" process that I talked about when discussing my website on Weebly. The only issue with Animoto, is that it only allows you to make a 30 second video. BUT, if you are a teacher and sign up under the education tab, it allows you to make a 3 minute video, with 50 associated videos for your students!! Back to the digital storytelling, we have just been given the assignment to create a slideshow of pictures in order to tell the story using ONE sentence. This sounds confusing, I know, but it is simply a slideshow of your own pictures, with a word or small phrase on each slide, that makes a complete (yet not particularly a proper) sentence. As long as it tells a short "story" using your pictures, you are good to go!! Once mine is finished, I will upload it so you can see exactly what I mean. It is nice to finally see that something in one of my classes is linking to a project in a completely different class. Digital storytelling is going to be used in my English Language Arts Across the Curriculum class as well! I am extremely excited to see what ideas all of my classmates have come up with! (although the expectations of this assignment have not yet been made clear, am I right?)
CLICK HERE to see my Animoto video!!
Another mini project we have been doing a lot of in class is photo editing. There are so many programs out there to use!! I have looked through a lot of them, and I encourage you to do so as well so that you can find the right program for you. For my class project purposes, I used iPiccy. Again, It was very user friendly and produces a good product. A friend had suggested that I use this program and I don't regret it for a second! There are so many edits that you can use, it is impossible to not find what you are looking for. And, if you do something that you don't like, you can just close it and start again. I must admit, I did this A LOT!! I have never really done photo editing before so this was a new experience for me. I can't tell what a well edited picture looks like. For me, it is one of those things that looks good for a bit, and then you look at it for too long and you can hardly tell what it is. It doesn't help that I don't understand the levels of "saturation" "exposure" "noise" and all of that other photo editing jargon.
So time has run away on me once again, and I feel that I have rambled enough for one night. Since I apparently have so much to say, I will make another post tomorrow about the class textbook. It is honestly one of the best textbooks I have purchased in my 5 1/2 years in university, so I am actually pretty excited to talk about it. But before I leave you, I do have a picture that I found funny that I would like to share with you...
I thought that this picture was funny and freakishly accurate. This is exactly how everyone sees technology these days, especially the younger generations. But, for now, I will leave it at that, as this is a great transition into what I will talk about in my next blog!!
Until next time, remember to "keep fit and have fun"! (yes this was a BodyBreak reference.. I'm so Canadian..)
-Brittany
Loved this post, Brittany. Glad you are finding the topics enjoyable - and hopefully you can use some of these in your upcoming placement.
ReplyDeleteI really hope so too!!
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