The World War II Website

In our last class, I mentioned the World War II website project that COE students and I have created and that includes many digital stories. Below is the link and information about the site.

This week, a new Ken Burns documentary mini-series about World War II, called simply THE WAR, is being broadcast on public television stations around the country and locally on HoustonPBS-KUHT, Channel 8. THE WAR looks at WWII through personal accounts from four American towns and the stories tell how the war touched the lives of families all over America.

For the past several months, graduate students in the IT Program have been working with me and members of the Education and Outreach department at HoustonPBS to create an educational website to support the Ken Burns film and help local citizens submit their own stories about World War II.

Our website is called The War Experience: Memories of World War II and it is now officially up and running. If you have some time, please take a look at:
http://www.thewar.coe.uh.edu/

We are very proud of the stories that are already on the website and hopefully, more will be added as local viewers begin to watch the film and visit our website. If you know of anyone who might like to submit their own story about the war, please let them know about our website.

By the way, the initial broadcast THE WAR began on Sunday night on HoustonPBS, Channel 8, but will be repeated many times over the next few months in case you have not yet had a chance to watch it. You can check to see when it will be broadcast by going to: http://www.pbs.org/thewar/broadcast_schedule.htm

Class Five Blog Assignment

For this week's hands-on assignment, you should add narration and computer-generated music to the digital story you created last week. Important Note 1: You may use the same photo story you already created, you may edit the initial photo story with new pictures, or if you prefer, you may create a new photo story for this week's assignment.

Important Note 2: Here are the instructions for submitting the .WMV file of your initial digital story. You will be submitting or transferring your file to the personal web space that you have been assigned on either the Viking or Mariner server.

1. Be sure that you have a copy of Secure Shell (SSH) for Windows or Mac. You will find a link to download SSH at:
http://www.coe.uh.edu/mycoe/cite/docs.cfm

2. On the same page, click on the link: How to Use Your Webspace on Viking from Off-Campus with Secure Shell (by Donna Smith). This will include directions on how to upload the file.

3. After you have uploaded your digital story file to the server, try to access it in a web browser or media player and copy the URL. Then post a comment here in which you paste in the URL and discuss your experience adding music and narration t your digital story.

4. If you are uncertain or have problems, bring the .wmv file with you to class next week.

Class Four Blog Assignment

After you have uploaded your digital story file to the server, try to access it in a web browser or media player and copy the URL. Then post a comment here in which you paste in the URL and discuss your experience creating this first digital story file.

Class Three Blog Assignment

Discuss the images you edited for this week's hands-on assignment as well as any experiences you had using one of the photo upload options we discussed in class or another online tool you selected on your own. Be sure to indicate which photo upload option you chose for this assignment and include a web link to your pictures, if possible.

Class Two Blog Assignment

The hands-on assignment for Class Two is to:

First, shoot a series of images on a selected popular culture topic.

Then, as we discussed in Class 2, we will be attempting to use wikispaces (http://www.wikispaces.com) to share digital photos that are taken during this course.

For this assignment, you should try to upload at least one or two images that you took by going to our class location on wikispaces. It's located at: http://cuin7358-07.wikispaces.com You will probably need some help learning to use wikispaces, so a tutorial on how to create an account and add images is available here:wikispaces-tutorial.pdf

After you have attempted to upload the images from the hands-on assignment, post a comment here in which you discuss the images you took for this week's hands-on assignment as well as any experiences you would like to share about using wikispaces.