What a ride!!  Let me tell you all about it!

No, it’s too much, lemme sum-up.   (You knew I had to get one more Princess Bride reference in there)

Final Project

I had a lot of fun making this project.  I still think the quality of work I produce is crappy, but nonetheless, I’m proud of myself for being able to do it at all.  I never thought I would ever be doing this kind of thing.  And even if it doesn’t appeal to everybody, it has sure brought a lot of laughs to me, my husband, and my kids – and that means the world to me.

Definition of Digital Storytelling

I don’t know that my definition of digital storytelling has changed so much.  I still feel like stories should evoke some kind of emotion. But for sure, my idea of who can tell a story, and how, has been affected forever.  This class will definitely affect the way I approach a lot of things going forward.  I have always been a lover of creativity, but now I feel empowered to be a doer as well, and I have been encouraging those around me to try to engage in that process as well.

Assignments and Tutorials of my Very Own!

I made my own assignments!  I made a Visual Assignment – When Unicorns Explode, and I made a Video Assignment – Inanimate Motion.  I also did a tutorial for each of these – When Unicorns Explode and Inanimate Motion.

Best Work

This was fun.  I’m glad we were made to do this.  I tried to select something from each category, and successfully ended up with something from the Web Assignments, Design, Visual, Audio, Video, and an extra Visual for the sake of adding a GIF.  Cuz you gotta have a GIF.    I still can’t believe I did this stuff.  I selected the items that came out way better than I ever had expected them to – the ones that actually seem like real media, not just child’s play.  I’m pretty proud of my Best Work category.

Advice to Future Students

This was a lot more fun to make than I anticipated.  It seemed like a silly extra chore, but as I pondered the idea for a while, it kind of hovered there in the back of my mind as I finished up the work for the Final Project.  And as it usually does when you let ideas simmer for a bit among a productive environment – inspiration hit.  I didn’t want to do a video like everybody else.  I wanted a quick, cool-looking, at-a-glance poster, full of tidbits of advice that you don’t usually find in these advice assignments.  Honestly, I couldn’t get GIMP to do the spray-paint effect I wanted, for the writing on the bricks to each side of the poster, but I still liked the way it came out.    And like I said, it was pretty fun.

The End – Or Is It…

The difference in the amount of time it took me to complete a task in each of the programs we were introduced to over the course of this class was astonishing to me as I went through the Final Project.  In this way (and in practically every way), I loved this final.  I am by no means an expert in using these programs, and could probably stand to take entire courses on each one individually.  Still, I am able to function within each program, and rather efficiently and quickly at that.  I can make my way through some programs that had, prior to this semester, been nothing but a mystery that I would never touch.  And thanks to all my issues with computers (which remained a true theme all the way up to this paragraph – this is my second writing of this paragraph itself), I had to download each of these programs every time I had to use them, just about, since I had to restore my entire laptop halfway through the semester and lost all of the things I had downloaded in the beginning.  So I got extra experience in finding and downloading and using all of these.  I think it sticks better this way.

I’ve had a lot of fun here.  I don’t want to lose my blog.  Then again, I don’t often have a lot of (read: any) free time, either, so I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do in regards to this class going forward.  But I want to stay subscribed to the daily create, and I want to check in now and again and see what I can do.  And at the very least, I want to keep my blog, and begin to really explore the various things I can do with it, once outside of the instructions of a course, and maybe occasionally within them, if I feel like it.

It’s been a blast.  It’s crazy to think I almost didn’t make it into this class, but I emailed both professors last-minute, and joined in at the very end of the first week.  From that first day, it’s been a mad scramble to get my assignments done every week, and I haven’t always been successful.  But I have learned a crap-ton, and I’m so glad I was allowed to come along for the ride.

Thank you.