Week 16: Digital Stories 3

What?
This was our third week of working on our Digital Story project. Our pictures are edited, in order, and ready to make transitions for. We are just waiting to put some other things in place first, so that we can know how long we need to show each picture for in order to make the digital story approximately 3 minutes. The focus of my group's time today was on our music. We are using a Beethoven song. We stuggled with using Audacity because our song was in the wrong format (ringtone), so we used Garageband from Doc Water's Mac. It was simpler to use than I expected, and it made me want a Mac even more than I already do! It was fun listening to the song and deciding which clips of it would fit best with the script and pictures in different parts of our story.

So What?
Music definitely adds a greater level to digital stories. If the music appropriately matches the pictures, script, and feeling of the rest of the story, it can help bring out emotions and create connections. We tried our best to chose more upbeat parts of our song for more cheerful parts of our story, and slower, sad sounding music for the parts of our story that we wanted people to feel more sorrowful. I found that it really did add a lot to the story. Before we finalized and fixed the music clips, there was a cheerful and upbeat melody playing while pictures showed a boy crying and pictures of scary medical tools. We chuckled at how ridiculus that was, and it emphasized to us the importance of choosing appropriate music to enhance the story rather than detract from it.

Now What?
Though creating a digital story is a lot of work, I have had a fun time doing it so far. I have been suprised to find that the tools like PhotoStory and GarageBand are actually very simple to use. I expected things to be more confusing and challenging than they actually have been, which makes me more willing and excited to make more digital stories in the future. I am excited to encorporate them into my classroom because it will give a new way for students to learn. Watching digital stories will help catch their attention, make connections, create emotion, add variety, and can be very enjoyable and memorable. Having students create their own digital stories will help them use higher order thinking skills, incorporate many learning styles, give variety to assignments and projects, give them opportunities to be creative and unique, and give them a challenging yet fun project that they can be proud of and learn a lot from.

Video: Millenial Generation
In this clip, students shared their "tech wish list" of technology they would like to have access to. They included what they believed "media mobility" to be. They determined that media mobility was having the ability to have technology with you wherever you are, whenever you want it. They predicted that technology will become more time effective, take out a lot of hassle, and allow more ways for interacting and communicating. I agree that technology has been advancing by leaps and bounds, and will continue to do so. I'm excited to see what new things they come up with next. I believe that the students' wish lists that they mentioned will definitely come to pass in the not-too-far off future. It will be fun to see what new technologies I can learn about and apply in my classroom.