LightintheWoods

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*note: uploading to slideshare changed the layout and design of the slides

Creation of Bear’s Birthday

The origin of this project lies in my interest in digital storytelling and my lack of having created many examples of quality or substance. A spark hit the paper when Karen, the instructor of my ‘Teaching of Writing’ course, introduced a story writing project for class. I had recently visited Dean Miezienko’s class with Dean Shareski, where Dean S. introduced the class to digital storytelling, naturally I came home with a few ideas for format. Unfortunately, I struggled with character development and the the topic of my piece. At this point, the project was moved to the back burner for a couple weeks.

My eyes are always open for teaching resources and at a Apple MacBook Training session, the rep John Maschuk*, shared a file of teddy bear pictures. He welcomed us to use the resource and the spark from my writing course took. I am a visual individual when it comes to these type of creations and I had worked with storyboards before. I was instantly inspired. I worked the slides into an outline of a story and then pulled the pieces together. As I built the sequence I naturally played with the story, character development and word choice. The visuals of this project were created in Powerpoint and I saved many files containing changes to the original drafts.

At the beginning stages of my revision process I shared early drafts with Sean White, a new friend from class. Between Shawn and my wife, Joleen, the story was enhanced by their trusted insight and suggestion. From their feedback I made some key edits to create a more patterned sequence, modified the sentence structure and played with general appeal of the slide design. At this point, I saved the slides as .jpg files, and I imported them into iMovie for narration, transition and sound. As I narrated the story I found more glitches in how the story was written. It is really interesting to reread something out loud and record it to get a different perspective of the voice of the writing. From this experience I had another revision stage and needed to make necessary changes to the slides in Powerpoint and then go through the importing process again.

I had a fun time recording and re-recording the narration as I tried to be vibrant and fluffy as required for such a piece. A point of suggestion is to make short sound bites, I read 2 or 3 slides at a time and then pieced the audio together. In this practice I avoided having to re-read the entire story when I accidentally mis-spoke.

While I was designing the slides I was thinking of adding Batmanesque onomatopoeia through visual sound bubbles and bursts of text. I decided against this because I wanted to keep the visual simple and uncluttered. Ultimately this idea still worked through the recording process as I ‘wrote in’ sound effects and music to enhance the story.

Version 1.0 of “Bear’s Birthday” is born on to the web

At this point I felt the story was ready to publish, but I decided to sleep on it. The next morning I reviewed the story and found another spelling error and changed the text color in a couple places. The story was then ready for publishing. I exported “Bear’s Birthday” as a .mov file and uploaded it to Youtube and disperse to an audience. I shared the story through numerous email, facebook, WebCT and Twitter. I may of been guilty of spam, or maybe it was my marketing background shining through. I told my audience that this was version 1.0 and asked them to participate in a networked revision. The audience grew and I recieved numerous comments through a variety of streams including email, Private messages, Youtube and blog comments. Karen Janowski, even took a few minutes out of her day to call me up on skype to share her interest, encourage me and other suggestions from a special education perspective. All of this feedback demonstrates the power of social media in creating quality web content and I really appreciate the attention folks gave to this piece. From the feedback, I made major edits, including a spelling error, a couple changes to the story and some slide redesign. Can you catch the edits?

After this batch of story edits to the visuals, I had an opportunity to visit Mrs. Lichtenwald’s Grade 1 class to share this story and get their opinions. They were into it and wanted to watch it a couple times. After the second viewing I asked them what could be changed or improved. I received some fantastic critique and feedback, one child even suggested that I add a character named “Mr.Noodle”. I chuckled, thanked him and told him I would think about it A few others liked the sound effects and suggested that should have more. I agreed and invited a few them for their best sound effect to add to the story. We all laughed and had fun.

After publishing the first version of Bear’s Birthday, this story saw a more indepth analysis and polishing. My participatory audience included related professionals from a variety of backgrounds including graphic design, teaching, music recording, ESL teachers, experienced digital storytellers and best of all, the children. This collaborative exercise has many potential applications in my future classroom. The relationship with audience gave me a sense of ownership and mastery with the writing and creative process. I wanted to created the best possible piece and my network of friends, family and acquaintances help make this a reality.

With out further ado, I present “Bear’s Birthday Version 2.0″

I am still welcoming feedback on this story and welcome suggestions for improvement. Enjoy.

Note: I would like confirm John Maschuk’s identity, thank him and link to any web presence he may have. So if you are out there John, leave me a note.