Social Media Reflection
Creating a social media story can be an engaging way to provide students with an opportunity to learn a topic using various stimuli including video, pictures, music and text. It can be a rewarding experience for the learner and the creator but there are hurdles involved in the making of the final product. For this assignment I chose to use the application Animoto. I wanted to experiment with the program as I have heard many good reviews from my peers regarding its interesting platform. I have created some productions in the past using non web 2.0 applications including PowerPoint presentations and Windows Media Productions but this time I was interested having Animoto create the production as it claimed to produce “beautifully orchestrated completely unique video pieces” all in tune with music and text. I was sold on it after watching a couple of the examples but I quickly realized the free version only allowed for a 30 second clip and I didn’t think I could create the story I was interested in making in that short a time. So I had to purchase the professional version in order to lengthen the time available for the piece.
I wanted to create a story that would be useful and interesting for students to get a quick glimpse of some of the icons of Quebec City. After living there for some time I have come to appreciate the unique architecture, culture and way of life there. I believed that Animoto could deliver something for me using my pictures and video to create a product that would engage students differently to learn about some icons of the city and particularly its winter festival. I was slightly disappointed in the small amount of text I could use to tell me story. I was constantly re organizing my original idea in order to make the text meaningful to the visuals. I enjoyed the amount of audio options that Animoto provided under license to be used for productions however I found I was constantly editing the story as it needed to be synchronized with the song and the application would leave out specific parts when the song came to an end. Without a timeline for me to judge the length of each slide it was difficult to design the production in a synchronized fashion to perfection.
I chose to outline certain landmarks and cultural icons of life in Quebec City that I found interesting. I believed the production could be useful as a tool to provide visual stimulation for students in a short amount of time that could be discussed in a class whether it be language, historically or culturally based curriculum. I hoped having students see some real visuals would be a motivational tool for them to create meaning in their learning. Discussion would follow the video to share ideas about what was shown. Also I felt it might be a useful tool to introduce to students to create presentations as Animoto is free for creating 30 second clips and provides much of the content needed to create engaging media productions using their bank of video, photos and audio.
Creating a story for the students was slightly difficult with the lack of options for text use. I didn’t want to use voice audio as I felt using music was a key component of the Animoto production and was important for student engagement and creating mood or feeling for the production. Having a story being told creates something meaningful for students to follow, rather than just presenting facts in wrote learning fashion. By using Animoto I was emphasizing the visual components of the icons which I felt were important to the culture of the story. I also appreciated the fact that Animoto provided me directly with the audio I could use under license so I didn’t have to search off site to find materials under creative commons. The slide transitions and effects was another point of interest for me as I believed I had not seen other productions quite as animated although I would have preferred to be able to control them more to have a create a more individualised style. The storytelling approach in this case was only limited by my inability to include text as exactly as I had hoped however I think I did emphasize the cultural components I was hoping for.