She was burning the midnight oil again when suddenly…

Inspiration struck!

“I know!”,

she thought,

“I’ll show them instead of tell them.”

And so it was that she began to tell stories through digital media.

She started with Animoto – a short video with a preset template. How could she go wrong really?

https://animoto.com/play/RfxejHnhG3k0tqf4KZel2w

A handy little tool.  Hmmm, most Animoto videos she’d seen were much longer. “Are they paying or am I missing something?” she thought.

Bolstered by her success she forged ahead and bravely tried Pixton. After all, what kid could resist a comic?

The night wore on into the wee hours when the sky is emptiness and all is quiet (except for the clicking of the keys on the keyboard at the kitchen table.) She toiled and toiled. The mic worked, then it didn’t, then it did, then it didn’t, then…you get the picture. And finally, finally she saved the last changes and embedded the link…(a few times.)

And despite the fact that no self-respecting farm-girl would ever wear dress pants and heels in a barn she declared…

“This!”

“This is how our next unit will begin.”

Her story was not done but the witching hour had long passed and beauty sleep alluded her yet again. She’d have to find another voice tomorrow. She closed her laptop and laid her weary head down only to take up the tale again another day.

This time she weaved her story with…Audacity

[ummm…so apparently Audacity is more about audio which IS digital but she thought the visual element was important so she thought she’d try something else.]

Here’s the puppet software she used called AnMish that she found on  50 Sites and Apps for Digital Storytelling.

They’re short and ridiculous but she could see kids having fun making them! For whatever reason the AnMish creations wouldn’t embed on their own so, like the Pixton comic above, she had to screen capture them and upload to YouTube first. She had tried EzVid but had quite a bit of trouble getting it to do what she wanted it to do. “Not so easy,” she sighed and decided to use Screencast-O-Matic instead.

“What’s next?” she thought, “I should try one more.”

She had heard about VoiceThread through her colleague, Kelly Christopherson so she thought she’d give it a try.

She uploaded some old photos, found some on Compfight and a video on Vimeo and voila, hours (and hours and many redos) later, she had her story. Here’s the short tribute to her family’s Remembrance Day Connections. Lest we forget.

It’s a little rough around the edges as far as production goes but she deemed the project a successful experiment. Here are the sources she used along with her family photos and archives.

poppy video – https://vimeo.com/32027057 via Michael Szefer

poppy photo – Photo Credit: jenny downing via Compfight cc

plane photo – Photo Credit: Jez B via Compfight cc

wheat field photo – Photo Credit: waferboard via Compfight cc

The midnight oil was spent yet again but she went to bed happy with her first attempts at the amazing world of digital storytelling.

The End.