CEdO530 Week 3

This week's lessons included an introduction to Animoto, another tool that can be used to create digital stories. I am excited to work with this application because I think it could add a lot to the work I do, especially as I work toward digitizing parts of the company training process.

Presentation Zen addressed Design Principles and Techniques, which I found to be extremely valuable. I like the way the book shows examples of original slides alongside final products with recommendations of how to apply the principles introduced. While I think I've used some of the principles throughout my presentations, I realize I have applied them inconsistently and without a strong understanding of how to fine tune my final products. I come from the old school presentation framework of bulleted lists, which I have known for sometime haven't been as effective as I would like; but I wasn't sure what I could do to change things up and still provide the information. I look forward to learning how to get away from those bullet points and provide a thought provoking "sticky" presentation that is as enjoyable as it is informational.

Overall, I enjoy the content of what we are learning--I am extremely overwhelmed by the amount of work and the amount of time I am having to spend getting it done. I know it is time well spent, but for the first time in my master's program I feel like I might not be able to keep up. Anyone else out there finding themselves in the same boat? I will continue to hang in there...

CEdO530 Week 2

This week of Digital Storytelling introduced us to VoiceThread , which is an online tool to facilitate commentary on presentations, including the ability to record voice commentary that could be used to narrate the information on the slides. I am interested in getting a lot of practice with this tool, as I see it having a lot of potential for the work I do with new staff members. Much of the beginning training process is covering the basics: About the company, roles and responsibilities, HR information, etc. The ability to create an introductory module to the training process in order to share this information through something like VoiceThread could not only improve the consistency of the message people are receiving, but would also cut down on the time I am taken out of daily work tasks to deliver this as people are hired throughout the year. Using VoiceThread would not eliminate the need for me or one of the supervisors to meet with new employees for orientation, as I believe that face time is important to making new hires feel welcome and to get them off to a good start; but consistency can be a challenge, and can be impacted by multiple factors (tight schedules, environment, person delivering the training, etc.)...a tool like this would serve well to eliminate the variables and ensure all receive the same message.

If I were teaching in a classroom, I could see using VoiceThread as a way to share samples of student work with families and a vehicle for students to receive feedback from a broader audience. This would certainly take some careful monitoring, and would depend on school/district policies about the use of this type of technology, but it has great potential. Students could also use a tool like VoiceThread to present culminating projects for their coursework: they could even start in a more familiar application such as Power Point and then upload and use VoiceThread to add the finishing touches.

Once again, I am looking forward to learning more about this new tool and I can't wait to try it out as I continue to update and improve training materials and techniques at work!

CEdO530 Week 1

This week marks the beginning of Digital Storytelling, which I anticipate is going to be a lot of fun to learn about. We were introduced to some examples of digital stories, which I enjoyed very much and can't wait to learn how to create one of my own.

One of our ongoing assignments is to take a picture a day and post it to posterous.com, which I thought would be easy but now I'm not so sure! I find myself over thinking this and need to just do it. I like the idea and am curious how the photos will be used down the line.

We also had to tell a story of our lives as we see it in the future. I found this exercise to be difficult in the sense that I was originally going to make it humorous and fantasy-like (a happily ever after story) but ended up keeping it more realistic. I anticipate we will be using this story for the basis of a digital story project...

As I said, I am looking forward to gaining new skills in the area of digital storytelling that I can use at work to enhance training and marketing materials, as well as in my personal life to prepare something special to share with my family.