Week 6: Mini Art School #4

Storyboarding

First, please enjoy the storyboard for the process of creating my MMP.

In case you couldn't tell, drawing is not a specialty of mine.

Anyway, after watching the videos from last week, I took the suggestion of downloading a template and printing out several pages of paper that each had 6 4x3 aspect ratio boxes. I also thought that using a pen was a good idea to keep the process moving, as opposed to erasing my sketched whenever I  didn't like them.

I drew sketches of the process I would go through for the creation of the main part of my MMP, which is going to be a multi-media rich laboratory report. To summarize, I will capture multimedia from a lab while the students work on it, and then create a model report. After sharing with students, they will work collaboratively to create their own for a future lab.

While drawing, I tried not to clutter the sketches with too many details; instead I just wanted to make sure that the main point of each frame was obvious.

The two main design principles I tried to consider when putting together the video itself were continuity and transitions. First, in terms of continuity, I attempted to keep the frames moving at a rate that would allow me to briefly narrate what I tried to illustrate. I did not any time where there was no audio because a frame was on for too long.

As far as transitions, Movie Maker has many built in options for how to go from one scene to the next, but not all of them seemed appropriate at all times. For example, when going from once scene to another that is taking place at the same time, but simply showing a different point of view, I chose transitions that seemed to be softer or less noticeable. However, when the project timeline shifted from when I was making the model report to when the students were working on theirs, I felt it was more appropriate to have a more noticeable transition.

Reflection

In any case, the most difficult part of the process was getting started with the first sketch. Once I got used to fitting the images into the small frames, the process moved along quickly. On a side note, despite all of the time I spent for the MDMC looking at new moving media tools, Movie Maker, which is a free download from Microsoft, seems like the easiest and most functional of all.

 

Concept in 60 Seconds

The topic of my video is the key points to a good javelin throw.

Reflection

After making this video, I was able to come up with many ways to incorporate this technique for instruction in the classroom and for athletics. Realistically, it took more time to make the video's overall appearance comply with design rules and fit within the 60 second time than compiling all of the content.

I received permission from the parents of the student for the video. Where all students sign a media release, this is not for school use so having permission, although perhaps not legally required, was important to me. Also, using music that is part of Public Domain allows any use or modification. In other words, there was much less red tape.