Looking Back
Digital Story, what is it? According to the University of Houston (2011) website on “The Educational Uses of Digital Storytellng”, it is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories. It mentions using images, text, narration, and music in the video and varies from two to ten minutes. When making a digital story you can tell any story that has a purpose and can be useful for others.
The process of making a digital story is very difficult, time consuming, and a lot of work when you’re not used to the tools needed to make your story. I came to experience this difficulty because it was my first time making a digital story. Just finding a topic to tell a story about was difficult because health and physical education is very broad and many topics could’ve been made into a story. Planning and organizing is a major key when making a digital story, the storyboard really helped to produce the story and knowing how to use your program ahead of time makes it easier.
Putting the story together such as deciding on the characters and who will play them, setting of where it is taking place, and sequencing everything to make the story flow was difficult. In my story I only needed one character but I couldn’t find anyone that was fully committed to helping me with my project and deciding where to go to take pictures was difficult too because places like classrooms are hard to get access too. One thing I found very difficult was getting the right picture for the clip because capturing the exact emotion without it looking fake and looking nature was nerve raking. I spent almost 15 minutes on only one picture that I needed because my character could not capture the image that I wanted.
These difficulties were easy to adjust after a while of working with your character. When it came to editing my story I used PhotoStory 3, which I never used before and had slight trouble using the program. I could figure out some aspects of the program such as adjusting the lighting and fitting it so correctly so that the backdrop of the picture wasn’t black. Adjusting the text to be viewable such as size, color, and length were not that easy because it didn’t give you many options to choose. I think this program was much easier than Prezi, which was the original program I chose to do the project. Prezi’s interface was very confusing and difficult to use because it was one huge canvas and you would have to watch the video to fully understand how to use the site.
The music to match our video was a challenge to select because we weren’t allowed to use real songs only sound clips from the site Partners in Rhyme. All the free clips that were available did not match my video so I was thankful to discover that Photo Story had a sound clip part in the program. This lessened the challenge but it was still difficult to pick the right sound to match the video. Such challenges that bothered me was should it be a sad sound, should it be happy, or have a mellow tempo to match the story. Though it was a challenge I found it fun to try and come up with a sound that matched the story exactly.
I mostly mentioned that this project was very difficult but I think the experience of using this tool for teaching is very interesting. It takes a lot of planning and organization but I think just by making these stories it gets the point across to the viewers more easily than reading a book. For my major, physical education, this type of technological tool will help students learn new skills easier than reading about it. Such things proper ways to bat the ball, shoot a basket, and even kick a soccer ball. Like mentioned in class most stories dealing with sports are success and learning to do something and working at is to be at the top. By making a video giving tips and helping a student improve skills will make them want to work harder in turn making them better and maybe good enough to play with the big boys.
Digital stories take a lot of getting used to because it’s almost like making a mini movie. I think the number one problem people overlook is the planning and organizing because it happened to me and it became difficult to make my story. Learning to use the program you choose to make your digital story is a must. Once you get the hang of doing everything to make the digital story it’ll be a fast and easy way to show off your skills to viewers.
Reference:
The University of Houston (2011). The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling. Retrieved from http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/.
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