Final Blog #8/Final Digital Story

I present you my Culminating Proposal! I'm ecstatic that my proposal was also approved so that I can now begin the process. :)

I'm happy to say that the process of creating digital stories have gotten easier each week! The process of creating a digital story (using story core, story mapping, and story boarding) to organize the necessary photos, video clips, & audio has made me very comfortable using Windows Live Movie Maker. As I mentioned in my last post, I feel super confident to attempt this process with my students now that I am familiar with the program.

My main challenge was the audio portion. For segments that I used actual video footage, I would record commentary while filming. I would prefer to add audio this way because the sound would already be embedded within the movie. However, this method makes it difficult to edit the footage because each clip would have to be perfect. While putting the digital story together, I realized that some of my prerecorded clips would not match the previous clip, thus I had to use record new audio anyways. Using youtube videos, I learned how to create and save basic sound clips for my digital story using Audacity. I had a lot of trouble with the noise level of recordings, and I spent quite a deal of time recording my audio with and without a microphone. I even had to resort going into my room to record a better sounding clip. Next time, I would like to try a different program (or even a different computer) to record sound.

Overall, I've learned so many new things to incorporate into my teaching practices through the course of this class. To be honest while watching youtube or short videos, I now pay so much more attention to the effects and/or sound/images used in the video so that I can I improve my video editing skills. I plan on creating short videos about certain classroom procedures that I use in my class so that I don't have to "teach" it over and over. My students (and other teachers/parents) can watch the videos to learn the basics in my class. This would be super helpful for new students who enter my class throughout the school year! Ultimately, I'm excited for the other possibilities that DST can do for my current teaching! :)