Delphine's e-Portfolio for ETEC 565A

My Experience with Digital Story Telling

My experience with digital story-telling did not begin with this course. I had created a 5 sentence story using slideshare.net for Etec 540 and it did take some amount of time to make the power point and then upload it to the social media for sharing. I was so unfamiliar with this media in such a way that it took me about 15 minutes to set up my account. I have certainly grown. As soon as Module 11 was up in the Learning Module I decided to get started so that I could produce a complex digital story that I could feel satisfied with. I wanted to do a story that I could actually use in my class and the course site I am building using Moodle. In January of this year, I had worked with a group which had used prezi.com to share some of the new insights we were gaining from this U.B.C/MET course. I had been fascinated but thought that this tool was just too complicated for someone as technologically deficient as me.

As I approached the task of creating this digital story, I went back to slideshare.net but realized I wanted to work with videos. I decided to try prezi.com and started to explore what it could do for me but I was a bit daunted due to the complexity of the grid. I decided I was going to do a video and use my students so that this project would not be one that I just did for a grade in Etec 565a but would be one I could use for my present poetry class and for my poetry classes to come. I found out that prezi.com could allow me to upload many things and the samples I viewed inspired me. However, I am not a great lover of Mathematics and I think the grids on prezi.com were a bit of a turn off because they reminded me of graphs and so I still continued to find fault and try to see how other tools could be used. I checked out Kerpoof, Joggle, Slideflicker, BubblePLY, Motion Box, Ahead and Zoho Show but I did not think they would have the lasting effect or the appeal that I wanted to create.

I went back to prezi.com after all my exploration and creation of two original videos one of myself and one of my students to see what it could do for me. I then discovered that the files I was using was AVI and Prezi could not accommodate them. I called a technician who suggested I download video converter to change all the files to FLV. Things started moving again. My digital story includes scanned pictures of myself, Google images and video clips, downloaded music from sounddogs.com and my collection of downloaded clip arts. I have never used so many digital tools before and while it might be the longest story, it is one which I have tried to make in such a way that I can use sections at different times and perhaps mix into something else at a later date.

Why was this the right tool for me to use to tell my story?
I believe this tool was right because I intend to use this story in my present class to inspire and evaluate the blended approach I have been using to deliver the course it is based on. I also intend to use it to inspire prospective students to sign up to do the course and I will also share the prezi with my colleagues through this digital story. The process of setting up the presentation is labour intensive but the end product is very appealing and allows for viewers to follow the path quite easily. It has the capacity for sharing as Power Point presentation with a difference which is what attracted me to it in the first place. What I like about this tool is that the nagivation and layout controls allow for a sequential preview of the story without preventing the viewer from exploring other areas.

How did I purposefully select my tool?
I selected this tool because of the exciting, unique visual appeal that it affords. I found it easy to create the path to follow. Some of the other tools were exciting but seemed a bit confusing when a user needs to return to a previous slide. With the use of the right arrow, the user can control the selected path by the creator with the prezi. The left arrow can allow the reader/ viewer to return to a previous slide without much complication. The autoplay is not working as I thought it would but some samples I have seen suggest that a reader simply use the right arrow to follow the path.
Having worked through some of the features of Prezi, I believe I will be able to convince my student teachers to use it in their teaching practice. The story can be long as well as short. There are also many samples that have been done in education using this tool that persons creating new prezis can remix. I was able to mix a wide variety of media to create a sequenced story. Prezi offered me many options to be creative.

How does this story work in a course that you teach?
This story could serve as the introduction of a lesson, be part of the development, as well as a meaningful conclusion. The prezi can be paused to relate only my early experiences with poetry in order to introduce the Introduction to Poetry course; to stimulate an interesting discussion on what poetry means to the students. The interviews with the students could enhance a lesson on creating poetry and the students’ reflection section could serve to teach student teachers the value of using wikis to teach poetry.
There are still other ways in which this tool could be used as the creator could invite all the students to view the prezi and comment on it so that more ideas could be generated on how to create others and to comment on some of the ideas generated by the prezi. There are possibilities for “asynchronous and synchronous communication in text, audio, and video communications” (Anderson, 2008a). All the students could be invited, using their email addresses, to view the prezi and make comments and thus building useful learning communities and thus “Expanding the Love Affair with Poetry.”

Here is the embedded version. Use the right arrow to navigate slides. The left arrow can be used to return to a previous slide.