Make the window full screen for an even better experience! Slow Internet may result in narration clipping, but you can navigate back and forth using the control panel at the bottom of the Empressr window or by clicking the appropriate place in the player window. Sorry, Flash is needed to play this.

This is a story somewhat about my fascination with one of the world’s iconic engineering masterpieces, the Eiffel Tower, but is really intended to instill in my students the sense that they too can design and perhaps even construct fanciful, complex and unique things.

I first thought I wanted to use a slideshow to tell my story. Using Levine’s (2010) list of slideshow tools I first looked at Imageloop and Slide, then tried out Vuvox but did not think any of them would tell my story the way I wanted it told. Further reflection ensued and I decided to look at Levine’s (2010) list of presentations, and decided Empressr met my needs in that it allowed control over transitions and timings of each slide and allowed sounds to be added to each slide. Additionally Empressr has built in audio recording.

I found Empressr to be the right tool to tell my story, because I felt I could not tell my story properly without narration, and I wanted to match the narration to specific slides to increase the impact of the story. The idea was to instill a sense that even youngsters can design (and construct) fanciful, complex and unique things, which required specific narration to go with specific images. Perhaps if I was just telling the story of my discovery of Meccano, I would not have needed such specific narration, and could have told the story with only pictures and a little text.

The story itself fits into the design side of Computer Aided Drafting and Design 11, the course I am creating ETEC 565A modules for, and attempts to impress upon students that every large scale project has been designed and drafted, and that even unique, challenging and grandiose projects started with one person doing a fairly simple drawing. The aim of the story is to encourage students to “think big” and to give them encouragement that their ideas are valuable and their designs are valid representations of possible products or structures. In staying within constructivist principles, students would not be drawing the Eiffel Tower, but would be expected to draw upon the story experience when they design a vehicle and then a holiday house in their last couple of assignments.

References

Levine, A. (2010) 50+ web2.0 ways to tell a story. Retrieved from http://50ways.wikispaces.com/Home November 17, 2012.