Email 6

Email 6: Welcome to week four – editing, presenting and illustrating your story
(sent Tuesday 12th August 2014)

Well, here we are in Week 4!  This is the week where we edit our written stories and add them to a particular application relating to the device you are using; and we also think about adding illustrations.  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.

Further ideas for stimulating your creativity
I hope that you are doing fine with your story creation? There are a couple of ‘finding inspiration’ methods I should also mention here in case you haven’t got started yet:
a) A shower has been shown to stimulate the brain to creativity. Have you discovered this?
Why we have our best ideas in the shower: The science of creativity
10 Ideas for Stimulating Creativity
b) Visit a public library or a primary school library and look through book titles. One idea leads to another – that’s what I find.

Recap of last week
Last week was our crunch week where I wrote quite a few posts taking us step-by-step on the journey of finding inspiration for writing, and starting our story writing. The two main methods of writing stressed were the Just Write method and the What If method. Of course you can use any method that suits you – I asked for some ideas on Facebook. The plan for last week was that you would start writing your stories in rough. However if that has not happened yet not to worry…there’s still time!
Lorato gave us some great ideas on what the African Storybook Project is looking for in a story. She mentioned that they are short of Level 1 and Level 2 stories. However she said that if you do write stories for Level 3 and 4 and you really don’t want to reversion them to be simpler, then to submit the Level you are most comfortable with.

Posts last week
I thought I should add the blog post links on this email as well as a refresher from last week.  They were designed as background to story writing posts.
Applications to use for writing on the various devices
I have kept you waiting for this information as I really wanted the stories to be written in rough first so that you can edit them comfortably and add the finished story to your device application. You’ll have noticed from the stories that the African Storybook Project stories are written in a presentation format on the website and they actually use PowerPoint for this. So we need to use applications that work with PowerPoint or that can be converted to PowerPoint. Suggestions:

1) Windows PCs or laptops:
Microsoft Office PowerPoint;  Kingsoft Office PowerPoint (free Office Suite); Google Drive Presentation
2) Apple laptops:
Microsoft Office PowerPoint; Keynote; Google Drive Presentation, Kingsoft Office (free Office Suite - http://kingsoft-office-suite-professional-2013.en.softonic.com/ )
3) iPad devices:
Office 365 if you have a license; PowerPoint;  Keynote;
Kingsoft Office which is free (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kingsoft-office-seamlessly/id762263023?ls=1&mt=8)
Google Drive Presentation
4) Android Devices:
Google Presentation; https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.officehub&hl=en; Microsoft Office Mobile (needs an Office 365 license (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.officehub&hl=en) WPS Mobile Office (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cn.wps.moffice_eng&hl=en );
5) Windows Surface Tablet
This has a free Microsoft Office suite on it
6) Windows phone
Microsoft Office PowerPoint; Chekhov App

Downloadable templates
On the blog in the section called ‘Downloads’ I have added some downloadable templates. I will also be adding the downloadable Creative Commons licenses this week.

Applications to use for illustrating on the various devices
I’ll be sending out some ideas for this shortly but the main thing is that it doesn’t really matter which application you use for illustrations – you must be able to save the illustration as an image (.JPEG etc) so that you can add it to the story in its presentation form.

Learning outcomes
Discover how to add your story to a presentation type of software such as PowerPoint, Keynote, Google presentation etc.
Discover ways to illustrate your story
Add a creative commons licence to your story

This week's tasks
Put the story you have written and edited into PowerPoint or similar and copy and paste the applicable license (or use one of the provided templates)
Illustrate your story.
Write a reflection comment on how things are going in the comment section of the reflection post at the end of the week, or in Facebook; or by email.

Webinar this week
Meeting Name: Presenting and illustrating your story
Summary: In this webinar we will look at editing the story you have written, and find ways of adding it to a presentation application that the African Storybook project team can use. We'll also look at different ways of illustrating a story.
Presenters: Fiona Beal and Lorato Trok
Date: Thursday 14th August at 3:15pm
Start Time: 3:15 PM – 3:45 PM
Time zone: GMT+2 (Pretoria)
Duration: 30 minutes
To join the meeting: http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/presentingastory/

Posts this week
This week I’ll be writing a number of posts and then once again Lorato and I will try to bring them all together in the webinar on Thursday at 3:15pm.  Types of posts this week include:
·         Software or applications to use on the various devices
·         Tutorial on adding a story to a presentation template
·         Places to find copyright free images.
·         Different ways of illustrating your story.
·         Illustrated story examples
·         The six Creative Commons licenses in a copy and paste format
And more…
I must apologise if I haven’t answered an email from you – this week I will be catching up and will definitely answer any queries relating to this week’s important tasks.

Warm regards
Fiona Beal



1 comment:

  1. This course has been of great importance. But how do I post my story which is in a file (pdf) format

    ReplyDelete