1. Letting Your Life Speak Through Digital Storytelling
Kristin Norris,
Director of Assessment
IUPUI Center for Service & Learning
Doctoral Candidate in Higher Education

2. Overview of Digital Stories

3. What is a digital story? An illustration of learning
A way of documenting an experience(s)
One way to facilitate the reflection process
4-6 minute digital video clip
First person narrative
Told in your own voice
Illustrated (mostly) by still images
Additional music added to evoke emotions

4. What is Digital Storytelling?
Refers to a kind of video story as well as the methodology used to produce them
The methodology is the integration of knowledge, cutting, paraphrasing, revising, synthesizing, and reflecting (Alexander, 2001).

5. What makes for a great digital story?
Overall purpose of the story
Narrator’s point of view (emotional content)
A dramatic question
Choice of content
Clarity of voice
Pacing of the narrative
Meaningful soundtrack
Quality of the images
Economy of the story detail
Good grammar and language usage
Examples – good and bad

6. Steps to develop a digital story
Write a script: write, get feedback, rewrite, and work with others (maybe in a group) to develop ideas
Gather images to further illustrate your story
Record the audio
Edit, add transitions
Add music
Publish
Present (upload to the web)

7. Copyright & Intellectual Property

8. Copyright Laws
These days, almost all things are copyrighted the moment they are written, and no copyright notice is required.
Copyright is still violated whether you charged money or not, only damages are affected by that.
Fair use is a complex doctrine meant to allow certain valuable social purposes. Ask yourself why you are republishing what you are posting and why you couldn’t have just written it in your own words.
Copyright is not lost because you don’t defend it.
Fan fiction and other work derived from copyrighted work is a copyright violation.
Don’t rationalize that you are helping the copyright holder; often it’s not hard to ask permission.

9. Why is copyrighting important?
There are 2 reasons copyrights exist – to protect the author’s:
Rights to obtain commercial benefit from valuable work
Control how the work is used

10. In all reality….
Although it is technically illegal to reproduce just about everything (other than under fair use) without permission, if the work is unregistered and has no real commercial value, it gets very little protection.

11. Suggestions
How will you document the source of your images and music?????
References slide at the end
In ‘Description” when they post to YouTube
Need more help or a refresher of what I just said?

12. Storyboards

13. Purpose Another means for editing/proofing
Assists with timing & pace of your story
Helps to highlight important ideas, which will direct you in what images to gather
Aids in the recording process

14. Example Storyboard Script/Sound Effect/Music Image/video
Mary had a little lamb
(sound – birds singing, girl humming the tune
Drawing of Mary with her lamb in a field of flowers
Whose fleece was white as snow
(Sounds – girl continues to hum the tune)
Drawing of a snowflake
And everywhere that Mary went
(Sound – girl continues to hum the tune)
Drawing of Mary Walking into the mall

15. Step 1: highlight key words or concepts

16. Step 2: Identify when the transitions will occur
Step 2: Identify when the transitions will occur. The “///” indicate the start of the next image.

17. Gathering Images

18. Gathering your Images Free from the web (Google images, Flickr)
Get permissions for using images
Export Powerpoint slides to JPEG
Snipping Tool (Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories)
Get your own!
Example Digital story – There are a LOT of images in this and too much text over some (sometimes text isn’t necessary), but illustrates the intentionality behind this step in the process.

19. Intro to Digital Storytelling Software

20. Windows Live Movie Maker (PC)
Programs analysis
iMovie (Mac)
PhotoStory 3 (PC)
Windows Live Movie Maker (PC)
Garageband (audio)
Built-in Audio recorder
Built-in music
Audacity (audio)
Pros:
Ideal for Mac users,
great templates (transitions),
nice editing tool,
automatically publishes to YouTube
Great transition tool
Easy to photo editor
Built-in tools
More commonly known
Cons:
challenging to get started (even for Mac users)
hard for non-PC users
Small screen
Final product can seem choppier (recording on each slide)
Less flexibility with transitions
Must combine narrative and music on other software (Audacity)

21. Music

22. Music YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/) Vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com)
Public
Unlisted ****
Private
Vimeo (
Your ePortfolio!
The author's right to control what is done with a work, however, has some validity, even if it has no commercial value. If you feel you need to violate a copyright "because you can get away with it because the work has no value" you should ask yourself why you're doing it. In general, respecting the rights of creators to control their creations is a principle many advocate adhering to.
In addition, while quite often people make incorrect claims of "fair use" it is a still valid and important concept necessary to allow the criticism of copyrighted works and their creators through examples. It's also been extended to allow things like home recording of TV shows and moving music from CDs you own to your MP3 player. But please read more about it before you do it.
copyright isn't an iron-clad lock on what can be published. Indeed, by many arguments, by providing reward to authors, it encourages them to not just allow, but fund the publication and distribution of works so that they reach far more people than they would if they were free or unprotected -- and unpromoted.

23. Producing Video & Publishing on the Web

24. Public vs Private/Unlisted
Share/Publish
YouTube (
Vimeo (
Your ePortfolio!
Public vs Private/Unlisted

25. Questions? Kristin Norris (norriske@iupui.edu)
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