Rip. Mix. Feed – Interactive Video
Click to view interactive Video
I chose to “Rip, Mix, Feed” my video documentary by using a free cloud service called Storygami. This applications allows you to add interactive buttons to the video easily and intuitively. These interactive buttons allow the viewer to obtain more information on the “profile” of people being mentioned in the video, to access links or images in video as “articles” and to view the locations of places on “google maps.” Some other functions included in the program which I did not utilize are “image gallery”, “video-in-video” and “social.” I was quite impressed with how Storygami allowed me to gather all types of digital content including social media like twitter and recombine it in such a unique manner. In the digital age, it is already quite a feat to allow average individuals to produce their own video productions and share it with the world easily. In my opinion, videos give modern culture the ability to tell stories orally while submerging the orality into a highly visual and potentially text based medium. This was accomplished by offering a feature to hyperlink additional information from the World Wide Web into the video. This tool would be extremely useful in the educational setting as more teachers are putting videos of their lessons online; but Storygami has the ability to tailor each video to the needs of the student by giving the student the ability to choose the information they want to interact with. I believe that this will revolutionize the flip classroom as the number one drawback of using videos currently is the inability for students to ask questions or interact with the material. Even with the ability to control the video in the temporal dimension, the transmission of information is still done in a very passive manner in traditional videos since students are only listening to lectures in a different setting from the school. However, Storygami gives the educator the power to ‘rip’ or gather pertinent digital content, to ‘mix’ or edit and recombine it, and to ‘feed’ or share it with the public. As a result, I believe this is the perfect tool to “Rip, Mix, Feed.” From the unique feature of Storygami to hyperlink with external sites, an individual could essentially create a series of video linked together with another video that acts as a home page. Although this is not the original intention of the application, I believe that such a usage would be a creative example of the adaptability and flexibility offered by web applications and exemplifies “transformed practice” from the New London’s Group’s (1996) literacy pedagogy. The ability to combine different multimedia technologies together to give oral, visual, audio, gestural, tactile and spatial elements changes the nature of videos. It also encourages students to transfer and re-create designs of meaning in different contexts which is very important in a diverse and constantly advancing technological medium.
Some other tools that are similar are Mozilla PopcornMaker and Adventr, but the former is not as interactive and the latter is not as user friendly. PopcornMaker does not allow you to upload your own videos without posting it on YouTube and although Adventr allows you to upload your own videos, the ability to link sequences of videos together can get confusing and complicated. In addition, both programs do not have the capability to link anywhere on the World Wide Web or have the ability to integratesocial media into the video.
References
New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92. Retrieved from http://newlearningonline.com/_uploads/multiliteracies_her_vol_66_1996.pdf
What a great way to add interactivity to a video! Thanks for sharing that tool.
Very impressive way to pull a lot of content together in one space and create a learning narrative. I’ve set up an account with Storygami after seeing your Rip.Mix.Feed. Nice.