Lesson+2+-+Digital+Story

=What is a Digital Story?=

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**DIGITAL STORY** **ASSIGNMENT**
Digital storytelling can be used to tell the story of an idea, a theme, or in the case of this assignment, a choreographer and his or her body of work. Digital storytelling is grounded in creativity. It is a digital literacy which blends images, text, first-person narration, and music. The creative process of creating a digital story gives powerful representation to your voice, and how you choose to tell your story is where you get to unleash all of your creative potential! You want your story to be engaging, informative, and truthful in representing the person, their choreographic work, and what you learned about dance and the genre that dominates their work.

**Purpose: **
The purpose of this assignment is for you to create your own 2-3 minute digital story. While the topic for your digital story is up to you, I would like you to craft a story that will enrich our understanding of the great choreographers so that all students will have a broad knowledge of each person studied. Remember you won't be able to say everything there is to say, so you should go through your research and select the elements that best support your ideas about what the choreographer accomplished and why you are drawn to their work.

**Directions**:

 * Identify a choreographer which you could create a digital story about.
 * Use PhotoStory 3, Windows Moviemaker, or iMovie for the creation of your digital story. See below for more details related to how to create a digital story usingPhotoStory 3.
 * You will upload your digital story to youtube.com in order to embed your digital story onto our wiki. If you do not have a youtube.com account, you may use our WCSPA YouTube account for this purpose. The account login will be sent to your wikispaces email account along with the assignment tracker.
 * Please note: With YouTube you can unlist your digital story so it will not show up in any public searches, but allows you to share the link and/or embed the video however you like. I recommend selecting the unlisted option if you have concerns about privacy.
 * In order to embed a video on the wiki, follow these directions: Go to the Digital Stories Link page on the wiki. Click on the Edit this Page icon. When the Editor tool bar opens up, click on the TV icon. Choose the Video widget and click on the online video format (i.e. teachertube.com or youtube.com). The widget will pop-up these directions for embedding the video:
 * Go to your video on Youtube.com that you want to embed
 * Look for the "Embeddable" or "Embed" field on the video page
 * Copy the text from Embed field
 * Paste into Video widget box (wiki editor)
 * Click Preview to preview the video or click Save

NOTE: If you are signed into your Google Account, you may use that authentication and (SIGN INTO YOUR ACCOUNT FIRST) then upload content to YouTube through that account. If desired, you may also upload your content to YouTube using our class student example login to Google, which is: Email: student.wcspa@gmail.com Password: wcspastudent2012

Check out the below tutorial about creating a YouTube Account and using it to upload content, as you will need to do for your Digital Story. To view the tutorial, click on the link below the video box on the left.

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 * Uploading a Video from your YouTube Account (Use Your Gmail Account)**

A.) A title and your name

B.) 15-20 photographs

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">C.) Voice narration that explains and narrates the images in a story format (i.e. a beginning introduction, a middle, an ending conclusion)

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Important:** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Please note that sound editing and background music are two important presentation elements to any digital story. As you create your digital story for the digital storytelling assignment be sure to check, listen to, and edit your narration volume. I recommend narrating and previewing a couple of test slides to be sure the narration is at a consistently loud volume. This is especially true if you are going to use the computer's built-in microphone. You want to speak clearly and at a "conversation with friends in a crowded coffee shop" volume level. This doesn't mean you have to shout, but your volume should be loud enough to consistently hear your voice over any background music. Err on the side of being louder when you narrate.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">E.) Appropriate credits for all the pictures (this is best done as a slide at the end of your digital story, unless you created all your pictures/images for your digital story.)**Important:** To cite a picture properly, include image author's name/website source (e.g., Photo 1: John Doe/flickr.com)

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">E.) Music (optional but recommended)

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Now that you have a better understanding of what to include in your digital story, take a look at a few other examples of digital stories, and search online via youtube.com <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">for some other examples related or not related to dance or choreography for the the purpose of understanding how digital stories can be used for a variety of ways of informing on a topic or a theme/idea.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Although the below examples pertain to dance in general, they are NOT examples of the exact criteria of YOUR assignment, and should be used only to gain perspective on what works and what doesn't work in a digital story. Some, for example, have poorly mixed audio levels between narration and music, so these are not the BEST examples, but they do offer some insight into the power and potential of the digital story. You should notice what contributes to the overall meaning and what you think could be better, and apply these ideas as you create your own story about your chosen choreographer.

=Digital Story Examples:=

This digital story by a student provides an overview of the life of Jerome Robbins, one of the most legendary choreographers in musical theatre. Although this example is longer than the requirements of your assignment, it does provide some good examples of how images can be used along with narration to tell the story of his work and his life. This is provided ONLY as an example, and no part of this story should be copied or used in any way in the creation of your story.
 * Jerome Robbins - A Digital Story**

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 * Digital Story - A Choreographer** (college student choreographer, Rachel Siegel) - Again, this isn't exactly what your assignment should be like, but it's another take on telling the story of a choreographer through images, narration and video mixed. I encourage you to discuss or think about what is good and what is less than effective about this example?

This example I created for a class project about choreography. In writing my script and then working with it, the topic ended up being way too broad and I had to generalize and reduce my story to more broad ideas. Looking back it would have been better to narrow my topic!media type="youtube" key="e4-P_99InrE" height="315" width="420"
 * Digital Story - the Art of Choreography**

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Important:** As I explained in the Syllabus, educators and students also have "fair use" to copyright music. You can legally use up to 10% of a musical composition in print, sound, or multimedia form. However, there are plenty of royalty free music sites on the Internet which allow you to legally use entire songs. Sites like www.freeplaymusic.com and [] offer a variety of musical genres. A simple Google search will help you identify other such sites. Please remember that even when you use royalty free music or "free music" you should still cite the musician(s) name(s) if given. Your citation can be formatted as follows - Digital story background music: "Backtrax" by Joe Musician.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Materials needed**:
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Go to Flickr.com or another free photo or stock image search engine to find most, if not all, of the images you need for your digital story. Please know that if you use images off Flickr (or any photo sharing site) make sure you are aware of copyrights. Flickr has recently changed some of it licensing agreements. At one time, most of the images on Flickr were licensed under a Creative Commons agreement which allowed users to "copy and share alike." Now Flickr offers users the ability to either release their images under certain common usage licenses or label their images as "all rights reserved". Creative Commons spells out exactly how an image can be used and how attributes should be given. In order to be completely sure and safe with copyright - I recommend starting your Flickr searches in the Creative Commons area of the Flickr site. Go to the following links for Creative Commons' Flickr images:
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">[]
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">[]
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">If you choose to capture/create your own images you will need a digital camera
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">For more information about copyright issues and the educators "fair use" clause related to copyrights, see the following:
 * []
 * []
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Your laptop - I suggest PC users create their digital story using PhotoStory 3, a free download. If you are a Mac user, you can use iMovieto create a digital story.PC users can use MovieMaker or download Photo Story 3: [] Mac users can use iMovie. If you use Photo Story 3 (the easiest software to use for digital stories), please follow the “how-to’s” below to create a digital story in the next section below.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Most laptops have internal microphones to capture your voice narration. However, if you have access to a standard microphone headset or a USB microphone - it will enhance the sound quality of your digital story. If you do not have access to either a USB or internal mic, USB microphones may be checked out for a period of three days from a WCSPA instructor.


 * || [[image:te831s11/standardheadset.jpg caption="standardheadset.jpg"]] ||
 * A standard microphone headset. Image source: logitech.com, used with permission. ||  ||   ||   || [[image:te831s11/USBmicrophone.jpg align="left" caption="USBmicrophone.jpg"]] ||
 * A USB microphone. Image source: logitech.com, used with permission. ||  ||


 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Evaluation **:

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">I will use the to evaluate your digital stories based on the "presentation value" (i.e., narration volume, image clarity, correct spelling of text), digital citizenship (i.e., image credits), and whether you have included the following:

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">a.) A title and your name <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">b.) 10-15 images (if you have more than 15 that is fine) <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">c.) Voice narration that clearly and audibly narrates the images in a story format (i.e., a beginning introduction, a middle, an ending conclusion) <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">d.) Appropriate credits for all the images and pictures (this is best done as a slide at the end of your digital story) <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Important:** To cite an image or picture properly, include image author's name/website source (e.g., Photo 1: John Doe/flickr.com). <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">e.) Music (optional but recommended, if you do include background music, be sure to check the volume, and include a credit for song title and musician name)

Choreographer Digital Story - Rubric
The below rubric will be used for two purposes. I will be filling it out to assess your digital stories and you will also be selecting two other stories to view and comment on (but not assess). For this purpose, another version of this form is available in the discussion forum for peer assessment, review and commentary. You will likely find that there is so much you can learn from one another!

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