Email 7

Email 7: Welcome to week five – changing your story to a video(sent Tuesday 19th August 2014)

This is the last week of the actual course!  This is the week where we convert our stories to a video and it is an optional week for those who would like to take this step and create a true digital story.  Please note that for the African Storybook Project we need the story on a presentation template with no sound included.  This video part is extra to that.   I do hope you have visited the course blog and have joined and commented in the Facebook group.  Remember, your interaction can be in either of these platforms or both if you like.  If your Facebook is blocked you can simply just interact with the blog. Please try to comment so that we know you are still with us.

Recap of last week

Last week we reached the point where you needed to know which presentation application to add your story to on your particular device. You  also needed to get inspiration for illustrating your story. So last week we dealt with these aspects. In one of the blog posts you were given suggestions for which application to use with a particular device. In other blog posts we talked about places for ‘Finding royalty free images on the Internet’ as well as 20 ideas to illustrate your story.  In the webinar you were provided with a demonstration on using a presentation application such as PowerPoint or similar (depending on the device being used) for your digital writing; and you were given suggestions about different ways of illustrating a story. I do hope the information was useful to you. 

Posts last week

Last week’s posts were designed to assist you in adding your rough story to a presentation application and add illustrations. These were the posts on the blog:

*Week 4.1 Recap of last week 
*Week 4.2 The week ahead 
*Week 4.3 Applications to use for writing on the various devices 
*Week 4.4 The six Creative Commons licenses in a copy and paste format 
*Week 4.5 Finding royalty free images on the Internet
*Week 4.6 Webinar today
*Week 4.7 Webinar recording and downloadable presentation
*Week 4.8 Illustrating stories

Downloadable templates

Don’t forget that on the blog in the section called ‘Downloads’ I have added some downloadable templates, Creative Commons licenses and a Release Form to complete if you use photographs of anyone.

Getting your story to us

There are several ways you can get your completed story to us. (You can do the same with the video version

• Email me your story fionabeal@gmail.com
• Upload your story to Google Drive and then sharing the item with me your story in its presentation form
• Upload your story to a dropbox folder that I have created called ‘African Storybook Project stories’

Learning outcomes

• Add sound and narration to a story
• Convert your story to a video
• Upload your video online

This week's tasks

• Send your completed story to us in one of the ways mentioned
• Convert your story to a video
• Write a reflection comment on how things are going using the comment section of the reflection post at the end of the week, or in Facebook; or by email.

Webinar this week

Meeting Name:  Converting your digital story to a video
Summary: In the final week participants will be given the option of adding different elements to their stories such as narration and music.  We will look at ways of converting the story to a video and posting it online.
Presenter: Fiona Beal (fiona@schoolnet.org.za)
Date:  21 August 3:15 PM - 3:45 PM
Time Zone:  (GMT+02:00) Pretoria
To join the meeting: http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/converttovideo/

Posts this week

This week I’ll be writing a number of posts and then once again pulling them together together in the webinar on Thursday at 3:15pm.  Types of posts this week include:

• ·         Uploading presentations to the web with or without sound
• ·         Adding sound or narration to a digital presentation
• ·         How to create a video from your presentation
• ·         How to add a file to Dropbox or Google Drive
• ·         Creating stories with your class 

Warm regards
Fiona Beal