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Planning and creating your digital story – Part 2

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Introduction

Once you have ideas for your stories and have decided (after some feedback from your fellow students, lecturer and others) on your topic it is time to move on to the next part of the storymaking process.This post is about the activities you will need to complete in making your story. When you complete your “Project Plan” for making your story you will need to think in detail about

  • what you need for each stage;
  • what activities you need to carry out in each of the  stages;
  • the time taken for each activity in each stage;
  • the overall timeline and fitting it all together – remember sometimes you will have to wait for feedback – so is there something from another stage you can do while you wait?

Storyboarding

Checkout this link on Storyboarding – the focus of this one is on digital stories with an audio component but it works the same way for the type of story we are doing. This link also has a “how to” on creating your own simple storyboard template using Word. This would be a useful way for you to create your own storyboard for your story. You will need to make your storyboard and get feedback on it before you start writing your story

Images

How many images will you need? This will partly depend on the length of your story but also depends on how many separate “points” there are in the story. You need one image per “page/slide”

If your story is being made in an online application with existing artwork images you will need to find images on the site that illustrate your points well and that you can use for each page of your story.

If you are using images that you find for yourself you need to consider where you will get them – will they be your pictures or from elswhere (remember copyright). How long will it take to find and edit images so that they will fit without making your file too big. Remember that you MUST credit image sources and creators.

Writing your story (script)

If your story was going to be an audio narration this would be called “writing the script” Because we are using text you will need to write your story as a “story”.  To help you think about the structure of your story you may need to look back at the story examples from the Symbaloo Webmix of Story Links. Also you can research on the Internet for stories about similar topics to your own chosen one and see how these are put together.

Draft your story (THE SIZES BELOW ARE A GUIDE ONLY):

  • for Certificate I you need ABOUT 150-250 words (5-8 pages/slides)
  • for Certificate II you need ABOUT 250- 400 words (7-12 pages/slides)
  • for Certificate III you need ABOUT 400-600 words (10-15 pages/slides)

Once you have drafted it is time to get feedback and do the editing and redrafting process.

Think about how long each part of the story writing will take – you will need estimates for your project plan.

Putting it all together

Once you have planned your story, sorted out the sequence of images and written your text it is time to put it all together as a draft using your chosen application. This is a good time to add any page titles, and also to add credits – usually a page at the end acknowledging help and information sources. Again you will need to get feedback and “polish” your story before finally publishing it and either linking from or embedding in your blog.

Conclusion

The information in this post should help you in planning your story making project. You will need to plan and manage your own time for this project over the three weeks of the project.

 

Planning and creating your digital story – Part 1

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Introduction

Digital stories take many forms, often they are a series of images with music and voice over. However we are going to focus on making digital stories that use text with images rather than audio.

Story ideas

Some ideas for topics, your final story doesn’t have to be one of these, they are just to help you start thinking!

  • Illustrating an aspect of your life to send to family or friends who live a long way away
  • Describing a visit, holiday, activity, event in which you have taken part
  • A portfolio of some of your work eg plans, designs, photographs of a project you have completed with descriptions and explanations
  • Illustrating, describing, explaining a leisure activity, sport, hobby or interest in which you participate
  • Demonstrating and explaining a practical skill that you have

 Outlining ideas

To help you make a final decision on what your story will be about it is a good idea to share thoughts and ideas with others, you can do this through your blog. However you will need to write short outlines of your stories to share.

Here are examples to help you.

Story outline 1. A practical skill that I have is planting plants. The story will describe how to:

  • prepare the space for the plant;
  • correctly remove it from its pot;
  • plant it; and
  • then carry out any necessary aftercare.

Story outline 2. One of my favourite places to visit is the Avon Valley National Park near Toodyay.

This story will describe a visit to the National Park during the wildflower season. I will describe the Bald Hill lookout area and also the river valley. Images to illustrate the visit will include scenery and wildflowers.

Conclusion

Think about those examples above when you are writing your own brief story outlines. Now add a comment to this post that gives some feedback suggesting changes or additions to one of the stories above that you think would make it more interesting. Just saying it is a great idea is not enough on its own 🙂