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.
68 comments:
I am not new to creating digital stories, but even so, developing one takes time. I determined what photos I wanted to use. Some are scanned, while others I took. The one of me was taken by a family member.
I cropped and resized these, working to get them as close as possible to the 640 by 400 viewing size so that the picture could fill the area and I would not have much to edit in reference to black borders. However, black borders cannot always be avoided.
I chose to use a slide design from PowerPoint for my text slides.
I also worked on timing and positioning of panning so that the viewer had a reasonable amount of time to read the text slides.
I had never used Secure Shell before and found it very user-friendly, thanks to the instructions provided for us and by Anne's demonstration in class.
Please view my digital story for this assignment.
I tried to play me digital story in the Cite Lab by accessing the URL over the Internet, and it would not play. I had to play if from my X Drive. I believe the problem is that the computers without PhotoStory 3 on them do not have the codec installed needed to play the .wmv generated from PhotoStory 3.
So, I just finished importing my digital story into Windows Movie Maker and exporting again as a .wmv. I used Secure Shell to replace the original with the revised, and so I hope the link above works for everyone, regardless of what computer you access it by (unless MAC users have a special problem.)
I have to say that I quite like making digital stories and I had fun with this one. Not having to worry about sound and timings so much allowed for a much more freeform style and I decided that I would do something comic themed.
Most of the photos are scans of old pictures, with some others from myself or other family members (mostly my wife Lindsay who loves taking pictures). The rest of the images came from the internet.
For the text slides I used Photoshop to construct them and make them colourful and different. For the pictures I have edited to look like comic frames I used Photoshop once again and applied a few filters to the image and adjusted the colours to get the effect that I wanted. This did not work too well on even moderately low quality images so I had to find or scan as high a resolution as possible.
The final digital story turned out a little longer than I was wanting and there was plenty more that I could have added. I am uploading it now to stop myself from fiddling with it until I run out of time :)
I have used FTP packages for a long time now and Secure Shell was pretty straightforward. Just need to make sure my space does not get too messy :)
Anyway, hope you like it, I had fun making it.
Hal's Intro Digital Story (No Audio)
Cheers
Hal
Hal,
I can tell that you had a lot of fun doing this. It looks great and is very entertaining.
I created a digital story at the beginning of the school year to let my students know a little bit about me. I chose to make something completely different when approaching this digital story about myself. Not being able to use music really made me have to think outside of my normal comfort zone. Since I couldn't use music, I chose to make everything black and white because I think it is easier to focus on the emotion of the photos. I also chose to have a running theme with the text so the viewer would not have to focus so much on trying to read a new set of text every time, which will allow the real focus to be on the photos and project as a whole.
My Story:
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~crepa/grad/iamcarolyn.wmv
Carolyn,
I liked the black and white effect of your digital story, as well as your theme of "I am . . ." throughout the video.
Well done!
Although I am still working on my photostory, I wanted to take a moment to let Judy, Hal, and Carolyn know that I truly enjoyed their photostories.
Carolyn - I enjoyed the black and white presentation, and I thought it was put together well. The "I am" concept worked very well in this storyline.
Hal - I liked the "history" and cartoon type in yours. Your projects always seem effortless and top notch. I really appreciate your creativity.
Judy - I also really enjoyed your photostory. I remembered seeing some of the images you used from earlier assignments and I thought you used them well here.
I am going to work on mine some more and will hopefully be able to post it later tonight.
This is the first time I created a digital story and it took a lot of time, but I really enjoyed doing this.
I think Photo Story 3 is quite user-friendly and I had no difficulties using it as a beginner. I downloaded photos of my topic and took some more and then arranged them in the order I wanted. I added text to the photos instead of creating powerpoint slides, but as I did not have many words, the notes on the photos looked fine.
I used only the basic functions of Photo Story 3, so my digital story may apear very simple and unprofessional. Anyway, it serves my purposes of introducing my topic and it looks acceptable in my eyes. I will spend time improving it, but now I can call it the work of a day.
The nightmare with me was uploading it to viking. I followed the instruction step by step and got as far as entering password. (I supposed it was the user name and the password I use to log in at CITE lab), but ten times I tried, ten times I was refused the terminal access. I will try some more times tomorrow, but now I'm almost sure I have to bring my story to the class on a flash drive.
In reference to Judy's posting about the videos created with Photo Story 3 not playing properly, you may recall that we had problems playing some stories in Room 327 last week. Here is the response we received on this from the tech support staff in the CITE Lab:
"To fix this problem, open Windows Media Player from the start menu. Right click anywhere on the top title bar and go to tools – options. Then check “Connect to the internet (overrides other commands)”. This will allow Windows media player to download the content of the web page so that the video can play.
Unfortunately, this is account level. Meaning they will have to do this every time they log in if they want to view videos being streamed from the internet."
I'm not sure if this problem is related to the one Judy had the first time, but the link seems to be working now (I just watched the video from home with no problem) and we can discuss this issue in more detail in tomorrow's class.
The assignment challenged me because I do not value things, achievements or milestones. I do have some things, a car, a house, and important papers. Additionally, I identify with the human family rather than my family in particular. I cherish ideas more than any thing, person or event. My PhotoStory is about my love for the natural world and a self examination of my conflicted interaction with that world.
The images come from the places I encounter everyday. I used PowerPoint to resize the images and crop some of them. I also added a greenish tinge to the shots that reflect self-disgust with my misuse of the natural environment. Thus, examining the world through a green lens reveals my hypocrisy. The character story, my romance with nature, unwittingly turns into a discovery story, as I uncover my betrayal.
A Natural Betrayal
My comments on other work…
Hal- I am amazed by the quality and depth of your work. I feel like I should be paying you to view it.
Judy- I liked the pacing of your story, it is hard to believe the amount you cover in two minutes. I also liked the contrast in images from your childhood with those of today.
Carolyn- Your facial expressions are hilarious. I liked the one-handed ‘water skier’ image the most. Your use of color in the image of the sun setting over the stadium was impressive.
Everyone's digital stories are wonderful! I'm so jealous because I didn't even think about how awesome it would have been to be able to use my own childhood photos for this project. My digital story isn't nearly as cool as Hal's but he provides a great competitive challenge for the next assignment! ;)
I rounded up the photos that I wanted to use and then made my title slides in Photoshop using some fun fonts and one of my digital creations. Once in Photo Story, I worked on the panning and determined which areas of each image to focus on. I had to adjust some of the timing to make sure that the image didn't wiz past the viewer on the screen.
Shaunna's Digital Story
Click to view Ramadan movie
I chose to focus on "Ramadan", which is a month of fasting for Muslims and I am currently fasting. It's a very special time and I always look forward to it. I used a mixture of images I took, images I found on the internet, and slides I made in PowerPoint. I used Windows Movie Maker since I'm use to it and it gives me more special effects to play with. Music wasn't an issue in this assignment but I think that PhotoStory does not allow you to "time edit" sound clips. It will play the whole clip, whereas in Movie Maker you can choose the start and stop locations of the sound clip. But I may be wrong about PhotoStory not letting you do that.
I haven't viewed anyone else's project yet.
Carolyn - I liked your idea of using Photo Story to share with your students.
Smela,
In reference to editing sound clips for PhotoStory, what you can do is to determine how long you want a sound clip to be and edit it in an audio editing program, like Audacity, and then bring it in. One trick is that if I want to use a complete sound clip and I am seconds off in my digital story being too long or too short, I add or subtract a second or two on this slide or that to make it work.
I enjoyed having a glimpse into Ramadan and the Muslim culture, as well as viewing pictures of family members.
Shaunna--Your digital story did a good job in letting us see your creative side, as well as introducing us to your family members, interests, and hobbies. Alaska and the Grand Canyon are on my short list of places to visit. Congratulations, by the way, on your new baby in February. How exciting!
In reference to adding childhood pictures, it is something that Dr. Robin did not mention, but I did so because I feel that being an Army brat is an important part of who I am. I have never clearly been able to answer the question of where I am from, for example. I have always claimed to be from Texas, but I have had a life-time of people shaking their heads and saying, "No, you're not," because I don't sound Texan. (I think my accent has slowly blended, though, with my surroundings through the years.) So, I added that brief part from my childhood.
Jaison--Your digital story had a unique perspective and does offer us a window into the individual you are. I thought of it in terms of Transcendentalism.
Ok, I am back again, but I am empty handed. For some reason, I cannot seem to get my files uploaded. I am wondering if it is the mariner issue or something else. I was even having trouble logging into the initial site to view the web pages. It was not accepting my cite lab password. Arghh! I will bring my files to class and hopefully will get things figured out there. My photostory is in its most simple form. But it is a starting point. I was having a hard time with the personal theme - and lack of pictures to use. This project was very hard for me for some reason. I just didn't know how to begin or what I wanted my project to be about. Or if I had an idea, I didn't seem to have the pictures or visuals that would work with it. I did get a chance to work with and edit slides within photostory. The program is actually very easy to use. It is all the other elements to the project that I am struggling with :)
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~rcavazos/CUIN7358/RCavazos.wmv
I really like digital stories. I tried to incorporate humor in mind. I had planned the sequence of photos in my mind before I took them and then laid them out and moved them around. I think photo story is fun and easy to work with. I cropped and resized photographs using Photo Shop to the 640 by 400 measurement and used the editing to correct lighting issues. Some picture just needed the black border around them.
You can also play with the text and place it where it is most effective.
This was a fun project and I hope you all enjoy the tour of my home and school.
P.S. I am a champion tennis player.
The hardest part of this assignment was figuring out what I wanted to do. Once I thought of something, I had to gather up some pictures. I took the most time findng the pictures and editing them in photoshop. I decided to do my assignment on a few things that I am grateful for. Overall I think photostory is a fairly easy program to use.
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~kscott/cuin7358/cuin7358.wmv
My photostory is available for download
here.
The biggest that I lesson learned form this project is that in order to make a quality photo story, you really need photos. I know this is probably obvious to most, but I like to think myself exeptional in every way.
Anyway, as you might guess, this is in no way a comprehensive story of my life instead. It is a compilation of good pictures that I have taken and cobbled together. I now know that I will need to begin with a more narrowly defined focus when I begin taking pictures for our final project.
All in all, I was very impressed by the quality and creativity of the postings. Judy, as usual, created a very nice piece. I liked the continuity of the powerpoint slides for text. It would have been nice if the ragged edges of the slides had been displayed more. Hal created an interesting and amusing photostory. I enjoyed the way he manipulated the photos and created the "comic book" atmosphere with his text slides. (More to come)
Carolyn, I really liked the "I am" theme that you used. I also liked the black and white theme, and it made a nice visual comment when you left the yellow sun on just one slide. Very nice. I really felt like I knew you much better when I finished the photostory.
here is the url for my digital story
I had a very fun time taking pictures for this digital story. It made me evaluate the most important things in my life... seeing as how I only had a bout a minute to do it... :-)
I think this was a neat way to familiarize myself with the prpogram and all of its capabilities.
I had a hard time trying to post it on my server space. I am not computer savvy but I finally did it!
The guy in the cite lab said to right click to save the target to the desktop in order to view it ;-)
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~apena/7358/index.html
Jaison, you had some very nice photos in your story. I would have liked some text mixed in so I would have a better idea what points you were trying to get across, especially because of the name you chose for your work.
Shaunna, I really liked the way you used the "scrapbook" pages to act as a connector between ideas. The similar "handwriting" on the same background created a nice flow from topic to topic. Your story was nicely done.
Sophia, I enjoyed your story. I thought it was lovely that you were able to use the story to share this important time in your religion. I liked the way that you had the sun move from dawn to dusk across the sky. It was a clever way to indicate that you fast during the part of the day when the sun is up, but can eat before the sun rises and after it sets.
Rene, I was able to pick up several things about you from your digital story. You enjoy school, you're a good tennis player, you are very neat, and you really like zebras. The photos were good, but it would have been nice if you had done something a little more crestive with transitions, etc. It would have added a little extra pizzazz.
Kristal, I liked your theme (Things I'm grateful for). You chose a nice selection of pictures. I found not being able to read the text on some of the slides until the end a little disconcerting because sometimes I wasn't sure what I was looking at. It might have been better if you put an explanatory slide first on some of the pictures. Congratulations on the coming attraction.
Chris, I enjoyed watching your photostory. I learned a lot about you, which was a lot of the point. I thought the transitions and movement were good. I think that some of the pictures went by a little slowly, specifically the swing and one or two preceding and following it.
Andria, I thought you chose some lovely pictures, and the transitions and movements were nice, too. I can see that your connections with other people are very important to you.
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~kjackson/cuin7353/kjacksonphotostory.wmv
I had a lot of fun creating this photostory. It was realy interesting to see my pictures come to life.
Keyana Jackson
I have previous experience with Photo Story. I use it as a good hook for a lesson or even as an activity for my studentts. I am real interested on expanding this tool and using it as a digital storytelling device. My photo story is pretty simple. It is a rather simple one but it gives you insight into me and my life.
Here is the link
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~amanzoor/cuin7358/CUIN7358TOC.mht
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~rrejona/rachel.wmv
This is my second digital story. The first one I made was not very likable, so I had Carolyn help me learn how to use Movie Maker to make a better and more interesting photo story. I am more pleased with this version, but I still feel really incompetent as far as making a digital story.
Hello! Sorry for the last posting.
Here is my digital stories "World travel"
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~shwang/sunhong.wmv
My digital story is short, but has theme attached to it that I tried to represent through the color of the images. Let's see if you can guess the theme (shouldn't be too hard).
link: http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~dvalde62/cuin7358/Digital%20Photography.htm
This is the digital story i have just uploaded.
http://mariner.coe.uh.edu/~anguyen36/
Hal, I really enjoyed watching your movie. It was real cool! How do you get the comic book graphics?
My link didn't work. Here it is again.
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~amanzoor/cuin7358/CUIN7358TOC.mht
My digital story is of my boyfriend and I celebrating our birtthday together. We share the same birthday. I was trying to create the story around the best part of birthdays...the cake!
\\viking\home\kso\homepage\CUIN 7358.htm
Okay...so I'm very frustrated because I just spent the last hour and a half trying to hyperlink my photostory...was that a pain! Danna finally figured it out. Thanks Danna!!! Now I missed the audio lesson...good luck to me with next week's assignment!
Now let me talk about my actual photostory. It was fun creating it. I had to use the "action" mode for several of them. I focused on things about me and some of my "passions" or favorite things of all time. Some of the pictures I dowloaded from the internet were not big enough so they turned out to be blurry...I hope I can fix them. I'll try.
Almost forgot...here's my link: http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~cgrimaldo/cuin7358/charonphotostory%5b1%5d.wmv
After much deliberation, I believe I have figured out how to post my photostory. :)
http://mariner.coe.uh.edu/~rlacquey/rlacquey_Photostory.wmv
I have just completed my first digital story. I am so excited I actually figured it out. Please bear with its simplicity...I am sure I will get better over time.
The story is chronological about my life. Some photos have been edited in photoshop and scanned. Many of my personal photos are in Louisiana so I had to improvise in some areas. I did not use powerpoint slides, instead added text through the photostory program.
I was also one of the few that had issues with viking. I still have a lot to learn about working in all of these programs...which is occurring slow and steady.
Amber’s photstory
ok..the fifteenth time is the charm.....
http://mariner.coe.uh.edu/~rlacquey/rlacquey_Photostory.wmv
I am still trying to get the hang of Photostory, so I began mine with the very basics.
I don't like how the text came out on PhotoStory, so if and when I improve upon this story I would put it into PowerPoint first. Then I could better utilize my text, placing my words on their own slides or in more strategic places with personal touches in it.
I tried to reflect where I'm from using pictures I took last week from around my apartment and school. I also included only pictures of my life here in Humble, since I have not been 'home' to El Paso to see my family in a while.
This concept is a lot of fun, but I would work on it in another program and then copy it to PhotoStory next time. The options to do a variety of things are just too limited in Phtotostory!
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~ealeman/cuin7358/Digital%20Photography.htm
I had a great time creating this project.
http://mariner.coe.uh.edu/~rlacquey/rlacquey_Photostory.wmv
http://mariner.coe.uh.edu/~rlacquey/rlacquey_Photostory.wmv
http://mariner.coe.uh.edu/~rlacquey/rlacquey_Photostory.wmv
Becca,
I noticed you were having difficulty posting the URL to your digital story, and so I backed up in it to your root folder. I hope you do not mind me posting the URL here, but you did not have the complete URL in your other postings. It may have been cut off because of its length.
So, click on Becca's Digital Story to view it.
Becca, I just viewed your digital story. You have some beautiful pictures. I love scenery.
I also love English Sheepdogs. Are your dogs part English Sheepdog or some other kind of breed?
Elizabeth,
I noticed that the URL for your photostory, like Becca's, was cut off so that we could not view it, and so I am posting the link below. I hope you do not mind.
Click on Elizabeth's Digital Story to view it.
Charon,
I noticed that you had the same problem as a couple of others in class in posting the URL to your digital story. The URL you posted was too long and got cut off. Complicating matters is that your URL contains brackets around the number 1. When you name your files, you do not want to use punctuation, other than the period that goes with the extension.
I hope that you do not mind, but I provided the link to your video below:
Click on Charon's Digital Video to view it.
Hi, Kim.
I was not able to view your digital story from the URL you posted. The URl is:
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~kso/
cuin7358/PhotoStory1.wmv
(I put in a space after the kso/ so that the full URL could be viewed, but take the space out to use the link.)
To view your story, click on Kim's Story.
Atifa,
I noticed that you had the same problem posting the URl to your digital story that several other classmates had. The message box would not show you complete URL, which is:
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~amanzoor/
cuin7358/atifa_2.wmv
(I put a space in after amanzoor/ so that the full URL would show, but it will not work with the space, and so I made a direct link to it below. I hope you do not mind.)
To view, click Atifa's digital story.
Kim--
Good start with your story. Is that your twin brother?
Becca--
Good start. I liked the picture of the dog with his/her head out of the window.
Keyana--
I liked that you used a lot of different pictures in your story. CONGRATS on being engaged!!!!!
Kim--
OOOPS! I read back over your comments and saw that it is your boyfriend in you b-day story.
Sun--
Looks like you've had some cool travels. You started out by naming the places with text, but then stopped. Just wondering why...
Atifa--
Good use of text to tell your story. It was concise and even included a "dramatic question" which is one of the 10 elements of digital storytelling.
EVERYONE--
You may want to make a web page for this course--CUIN 7358--and create links to your digital stories from that web page. Then you can always post the same URL which directs us to your CUIN 7358 web page. This might help you organize your work and make it easy to find.
Hal--
Great use of storytelling using the comic book genre.
Anne- yes everyone thinks we are brother and sister. I guess when you are with someone so long, you start to look alike? We even have the same birthday.
I'm still REALLY new to this digital storytelling stuff, but photo shop is kind of a guilty pleasure with me.
I still feel much more comfortable with power point slide shows since we've spent countless hours in education courses learning the ins and outs of timing presentations.
I do enjoy the 'ready made' feel of photostory in that you can just import pictures and the presentation runs on its own, but I look forward to timing it to fit music or dialogue.
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~staylor/Photo%20Story/Personal%201a.wp3
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~ealeman/cuin7358/Digital%20Photography2.htm
For this assignment I chose to create a photostory about me. There is just pictures and no narration so the photostory is somewhat dull. I used about 15 pictures with the average of about 4 seconds per picture. The pictures are comprised of piectures I obtained from the internet and personal photographs. I had an easy time creating this photostory since it comprises of only pictures.
For this photo story I used pictures that I had taken of my niece Marren. I used photo story to create my digital story and just quickly placed 10 images in the story.
http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~sbrower/PhotoStory/SBrowerAssign4.wmv
Photo Story.
One of my dream was to travel all around the world. Yet, it was apparent that I could not make that dream come true right now. Thus, I have collected several pictures of countries that I would like to go later. I used digital photo story program. The digital photo story for this project was easy to use and very intuitive. I am looking forward to learn more about it.
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