EDLD 5363 - Week 1 Reflection

The digital story assignment was an interesting one.  I have used video editing software, but have never used it extensively.  I chose to use Microsoft Photo Story 3 to complete my project.  This is the first time that I have used this program.  It was simple to use but I felt limited to in what I could do.  In other software such as iMovie or Microsoft Movie Maker, the user has more control over voice and sound editing.  This is a good program for basic slide shows with some voice audio and music, and would be good for a school looking for a free program to use within the classroom.

The concept of digital story telling was new to me.  I had never done this before.  The examples from the Center for Digital Storytelling were helpful in how to construct a story (Lambert, 2007).  This would be an excellent project in almost any subject area.  The pictures help bring meaning to the words and help to better communicate your message (Shank, n.d.).  I found the process simple, but it became time consuming to find picture because I did not have many picture of my own on my topic.  In hindsight it may have been simpler to create a story from a vacation where I had a large amount of pictures of my own to work with.  However, this did give me an opportunity to look at the resources available at cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com.  I used the website compfight.com that located creative commons images on flicker.com.  Since the images available had already been granted permission for reuse by the creator/owner, this made the issue of copyright a nonissue.  I would definitely use that site and the cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com site as a resource in my own classroom.

This assignment I feel met standard TF-V.C.2 located in Williamson’s and Redish’s (2009) Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards:  What Every K-12 Leader Should Know and Be Able to Do.  This standard states candidates will be able to “locate, select, capture, and integrate video and digital images, in varying formats for use in presentations, publications and/or other products” (p. 232).  I feel that this assignment was an example of this and it helped me gain a better understanding of how to create these types of presentations.

References

Lambert, J. (2007, February).  Center for Digital Storytelling. Retrieved on June 5, 2012 from http://www.storycenter.org/history/

Shank, P. (n.d.). The value of multimedia in learning. Think Tank. Retrieved on June 5, 2012 from http://www.adobe.com/uk/designcenter/thinktank/valuemedia/

Williamson, J. & Redish, T. (2009). ISTE’s technology facilitation and leadership standards: What every k-12 leader should know and be able to do. Eugene: OR: International Society for Technology in Education.