Tag Archives: images

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.

 

Here! You pinched my photograph!

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But It’s Mine!

Suppose you took a fantastic photo with your digital camera, and you put it up on the web. You would be very proud of it, and you would be right to be proud of it.

Now, suppose some thief came along, stole it, and made lots of money from it? You wouldn’t be very happy, would you?

thief

(Image courtesy Purdue University)

No, I didn’t think you would be.

So When Is It Okay to Copy Stuff?

You can copy things when the owner says you can. They might tell you that you need to say where you got it from, and how you can use it. Look at that picture just above. The owner (Purdue University) is very happy for me to put in this blog, because they said I could provided that I said where it came from “(Image courtesy Purdue University)” and I wasn’t going to sell it.

CREATIVE COMMONS

Creative Commons is a way that people are happy to share their stuff with you provided that follow the Creative Commons rules that apply. You quite often see an image that looks like this:

CC BY-NC-SA

A Creative Commons Licence

This is almost the same license as the one for the thief image.

Always be sure to read the Creative Common license for any pictures or words that you want to use yourself. If you are unsure, ask someone!

 Where Can I Get Pictures?

You may have heard of Flickr. It has lots of pictures that you can use under a Creative Commons license. When I entered this:

creative commons horse

Creative Commons horse request on Flickr

I found this:

Foal

Lady, you’ve got a weird eye!?

The photographer (Jinterwas) has asked that she is acknowledged as the photographer, so here is a link to her web pages on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jinterwas/.

If you click here, you will see where Jinterwas put the original photo, and you will also see a link to the license:

license

License link

If you click on that “License” link, it will tell exactly what you are allowed to do with her photo.

You can get to the Flickr web site by clicking on this link.

For More Information

For an excellent post by Ronnie Burt on what you can and cannot use, have a look at this link.

Phil Hart (https://philhart.edublogs.org/)