Gordana's ETEC 565A e-portfolio

I countinue my explorations on what tool to choose for my digital story. Now when I have the story it should be easier and more productive. I’ve been watching Levine’s story Dominoe produced using different Web 2.0 tools. Here are some of the tools from Levine’s wiki http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools I’ve inspected:

• http://www.imageloop.com/en/index.htm – doesn’t suit me because there are only photos, without subtitles or narration – wrong, I missed the Show button
• http://www.slide.com/ – I like it because there are subtitles and I also like the design template in a form of film frames. It suits me because it reminds me on the past, and the events in my story were happening a long time ago.
• http://www.ourstory.com/ – it’s suitable for talking about events when it is important to show how they unfold in time. However, it is not such important for me in this case.
• http://voicethread.com/ – through images on the side that are connected to audio it is possible to go more in detail. It’s a great affordance, but I don’t need it for my story.
• http://www.vuvox.com/ – looks great, combines animated images and sound, but the animation is uneven
• http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/ – combines photos and text, simple and well structured, requires an audience to click so the story goes further. I like it.
• http://www.mapwing.com/ – combines photos, text and a map. That would be ideal for my story. The photos are animated, there are a play and stop options. It is well structured, but it doesn’t look well – the map is too plain.
• http://maps.google.com/ – on the left side there is a list of the positions marked on the map with corresponding text and one can easily follow the story by clicking items in the list. When one click an item a pop up window appears on the map with a photo and  corresponding text. It is possible to embed an audio too. I think it’s a great way to present a story happening in different locations.
• http://www.slideshare.net/ – creates Flash easily embedded in other web sites, it’s possible to add audio

Group collaboration and discussion within the wiki differed from discussion in LMS in several ways.

All group members’ contributions were placed in one page which made the whole text easier to read and more structured. Also, it looked like the contributions were shorter and more focused than in LMS discussions.

On the other hand, the discussion in wiki was harder to follow since all „posts“ were in one space, not separately as in space for discussion in LMS.

The affordances of wiki represent great advantage for group work – all group members can easily contribute to the common text. One of the challenges was that there were no rules for group collaboration. Another challenge is the possibility to unintentionally erase somebody else’s text.

In my explorations of social media I visited http://www.go2web20.net/, a page containing quite an extensive list of web 2.0 applications (71 pages, about 45 tools per page). Luckily, there is a link most-popular containing only 75 tools. I’ve been using only 15 of them. 🙁

In order to find a tool for my digital story (Assignment 5), I’ve taken a peep at some of the listed tools:

• Animoto http://animoto.com/ – Video Slideshow Maker with Music (similar to video editing applications)
• Snap http://www.snap.com/ – Snap Shots uses your links to bring the most appropriate information about the sites you’re pointing to without leaving your original site (could be useful for enhancing web pages) 
• Zamzar http://www.zamzar.com/ – free online conversion (very useful, I wish I had known about it before)

This is place for my reflections in ETEC 565. At the moment there aren’t any reflections here (which doesn’t mean that I haven’t done my reflections), but it will change soon.