The clipboard in a modern operating system is one of the most useful and practical tools available. Being able to select some text or images, copy them to the clipboard, and then paste them in other places is indispensable (look at the uproar over the fact that the iPhone OS 1.0 & 2.0 did not support a clipboard to see how valuable it is). You most likely use it without giving it another thought.

The standard clipboard behavior is that when you copy a new item, it replaces the existing item. You can’t go back to the previous item as there is no history of items copied. This is what a Clipboard Manager does, providing a memory and browsing history so you can paste something, and then find it later, even after using the clipboard multiple times.

There are quite a few Clipboard Managers available for OS X, some free, some not. Here’s a quick overview of what is on offer and what they can and can’t do.

Clipper

Clipper is the most simple of the clipboard managers available. It sits in the menu bar and allows no-frills access to text clipboard history. It’s an open sourced tool that provides no keyboard shortcuts, but does the job for a simple text clipboard manager.

Jumpcut

Jumpcut is another open source clipboard manager that focuses on the basic text history. A customizable hotkey will let you cycle through the various items in the history with an on-screen overlay, or you can directly select an item from the menu bar.

Clyppan

Originally also known as Clipper in earlier versions (name changed to avoid confusion with the Clipper mentioned above), Clyppan is an open source solution that sits in the menu bar, popping up with a customizable hotkey to let you see what’s in the history. Clyppan only supports text clippings, but the history is searchable and pressing the spacebar will give you a Quick Look-style preview of the clipping. It also has a rapid paste function, which pastes the current item, and then sets the clipboard to the next item; this lets you copy lots of items in a row to then quickly paste later on.

ClipMenu

ClipMenu is a freeware clipboard manager that offers support for both text and images. It sits in the menu bar and will break the history into browsable menu sections to avoid UI crowding. It has customizable hotkeys and many functional aspects are configurable, including being able to hold control when selecting an item to perform configurable ‘Actions’ before pasting (such as converting to upper case). ClipMenu also lets you configure regular text clippings for quick access to items you use often.

Savvy Clipboard

Savvy Clipboard is the simplest of the paid offerings, costing $12 (a free trial available). It supports both text and images in the clipboard and provides customizable hotkeys for accessing it.

PTHPasteboard

PTHPasteboard is comprehensive clipboard manager that supports multiple text and image clipboards. The normal version is free, while a Pro version is available for $24.95 that allows you to share and synchronize clipboards across multiple Macs, as well as run configurable filters on text (such as converting to upper case). Full configuration of hotkeys and aspects of the UI is present and you can search the clipboard history to find what you’re looking for.

iClip

iClip is a beautifully designed application (perhaps too fancy for a simple tool) that can behave in a Dock-like way, staying attached to a side of the screen and popping out when the mouse goes to the edge. iClip can handle images as well as text, and also allows groupings of permanently availably items, providing quick access to often used resources. It has fully customizable keyboard and UI behavior support. iClip costs $29 and a free trial (which can be run 30 times) can be downloaded to try it out first. Also available is iClip Lite, which is a completely free Dashboard Widget that allows you to view the clipboard history. If you only need basic use and like using dashboard widgets, the lite version may fit your needs.

Clipboard Evolved

Clipboard Evolved offers multiple custom-named clipboards for both text and images for $15 (a free trial is available). It offers full keyboard hotkey customizing and various UI options (such as a Dock-like display) including various quartz graphics transition effects (and thus requires OS X 10.5).

Cute Clips

Cute Clips is another OS X 10.5 only clipboard manager. It costs $15 and a free 15 day trial is available. It supports both text and images and focuses on a rich UI experience and provides features such as ’stickying’ a clipping (so it will stay in that position and not drop off), naming a clipboard item, or giving a specific clipping a keyboard shortcut.

Stuf

Like PTHPasteboard, Stuf (formally known as Shadow) offers a shared clipboard across multiple Macs. It lets you create multiple clipboards and elect to make them visible to other Macs. It supports text and images, lets you search the clipboards, allows a customizable hotkey and provides Quick Look integration by pressing the spacebar. Stuf costs around $20 and a 30 day trial is available.

Which one?

There’s a great range of choices for clipboard managers on OS X — all which add great utility to the built in clipboard. I personally have been using Clyppan for a while now as I don’t deal with images often — the fact that it handles text only is no problem for me. However all of the options do their job well so it really just comes down to your workflow requirements and personal usability preference. If you’ve never used a clipboard manager before, give one a try.

On June 15, 2009, Yahoo’s video-editing platform Jumpcut will close.  You might be thinking: “Who cares, anyway?” Well, Jumpcut was a  differentiator in the Streaming video world. It is actually  the little web-based editing functionalities that are missing  in many platforms right now for non-super tech savvy people.  

You might be saying again: “Yes, but there is iMovie, and Windows Movie Maker.”

 True. But, instead of pushing a non-differentiation uncompetitive Yahoo! Video platform, Jumpcut could have been kept alive and better integrated or merged with Yahoo! Video, with Flickr Video or as a stand-alone tool or API compatible with the top video platforms like Youtube, Dailymotion, Blip.tv or else.  It could have been what Picnik is to the photo world, a tool, an intermediate, and Yahoo had plenty of time to do that since Jumpcut was acquired in 2006.

Jumpcut could have been the real User-generated Goodness product.   It brought us the Crash the Superbowl Video Contest (official web site).  This contest revealed real creators (vs. YouTube’s “Wonder of the hour” ) and future directors to the world eye, which has a way deeper dimension and a much broader meaning, even if it is in the advertising world (some people will say they hate advertising anyway).

Do stats say it all?   When we look at the stats, it makes sense to kill it, still it was not promoted to the extent it truly deserved. Yahoo was too busy managing, what was at the time 4 non-integreated with each other video platforms. Yes you heard it: FOUR! When you have two similar product, it is a problem; four is just an overload or an incapacity to make decisions.  The official reason: “This was a difficult decision to make, but it’s part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo! ” At last.  Good enough!  

For once, Google trends and Comscore data seems to align in showing a drop from 60K monthly unique visitors to 30K and less:

And Google Trends:

Jumpcut was stronger in United States and India.

Two same-topic  articles you might find interesting :

Yahoo’ Entire Sorry acquisition story.

Yahoo used to be good at acquisition.

The other upcoming video editing platforms out there Jaycut.com and MovieMasher.com don’t seem to get any closer to a broad adoption.  Jaycut seems to have an interesting suite of integrated video services/products and has won a RED Herring distinction.

Let’s wish them luck!  And about Jumpcut? Maybe that was just me getting too emotional about a defunct product.  When it is too late, it is just too late.

It’s hard for me to believe that anyone who surfs the web does not yet know about YouTube. It’s ubiquitous. I love YouTube. I have come to rely upon it. If I get a song stuck in my head, but can’t remember parts of it; if I want to refresh my memory about some old TV commercial; if I get nostalgic and want to watch clips of School House Rock, if I want to preview a number from a musical, I go to YouTube and it’s there! It’s really quite amazing. I love being able to share funny or socially/politically important videos with my friends on Facebook. And I enjoy watching the videos they post.

Facebook makes it so easy to post a video. You only have to copy and paste the url. I recently posted this video to my Facebook page:

Okay. That was pretty easy too. This tool has definite potential for use in the library. We could take video of all kinds of programs and embed them in our website. Patrons could access programming from home! I’m not crazy about the idea of discouraging patrons from passing through our doors, but perhaps it would work as a promotion of sorts: You’ve seen it online, now come see it LIVE @ your library. YouTube would also be great to use to embed video of booktalks in the website, adding another dimension to booklists and reviews.

I’m feeling inspired to upload and share something original. This was created by a fLip video camera that was mine until my daughter discovered it. Now, I’m no videographer, but I’m thinking this camera has some significant limitations. Nonetheless, here’s my attempt. The only thing I could find moving outside was this bumblebee. Now she’ll be famous! Timing is everything. 

Okay, just one more while I’m at it.  This is my wild cat Karma. My son claims she “followed” him home. All I know is, Karma is Karma. As you can see, she quickly tired of the chase to laser light game. I guess she’s out of shape. Note the distinct lack of enthusiasm from the feline onlookers.

I didn’t take the time to explore JumpCut, but I am very interested and will revisit at a later date.

Like a magpie, you gravitate towards things that are shiny: cell phones, TVs, anything that allows you to play Rock Band. But just because you love ‘em doesn’t mean you know much about ‘em. That’s where we come in.

Every week we will be highlighting the best, coolest and shiniest in technology. Consider us your personal Geek Squad. And let us tell ya; with CC on your side, geek has never looked so chic.]

We all have computers, but what do we really use them for? More than likely they’re dedicated to the normal music/internet/term paper cycle with a little Snood and movie watching thrown in for fun. But there’s a ton of other things that can be done with them. And there’s no reason to let money or lack of technical know-how stand in your way of making the most of your machine.

Graphic Software:

So your BFF makes hilarious pictures with Photoshop. You know, changing that can of soda you had at last week’s party into a 40 and writing some incriminating line above your head. Haha, very funny.  You want to join in the fun…and get her back but you don’t have the programs for it. You could do it in paint, but that’s lame. Why don’t you try Paint.net or pikifix.com first? They may not make you a graphic artist but they’re prefect for having a little fun with pictures when you have a little time.

Video Editing:

We all want to be Michael Moore. Or Guillermo del Toro. Or at least those awesome people who get famous posting a video online. Too bad all you know how to do is watch stuff on YouTube. No reason to let that stop your creative vision. Try eyespot.com or JumpCut.com to create your masterpieces. They won’t be cinematic masterpieces, but a cute video plea to Mom and Dad might convince them to put a little extra money in your account this month.

Need a printer?

I know the worst thing about living in the dorms was a lack of printers. I was always running to the computer lap at the last minute to print that term paper, but there was only ONE lab with a laser printer. And someone was always printing a novel on it. Good times. That can be a thing of the past with PrinterAnywhere. You can print literally “hook up” your computer to any printer in the world and get your work on paper. Got a friend living off campus? Send your essay to her printer then pick it up en route to class.

Need a scanner?

You don’t need to purchase some overpriced scanner to get those funny pics online. All you need is a camera phone. You can use it with scanR, a program that turns your mobile into a scanner, sort of. It uses optical character recognition to convert your pictures. Just email them from your phone.

Video production company PixelFish announced today that it has acquired recently-shut down online video editing/white-label video company Eyespot. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded and angel-funded in 2006, the Torrance, Calif.-based PixelFish has 15 employees and is similar to TurnHere, offering to create low-cost video promotions for small and medium-sized businesses that can be distributed to outlets like Yellowbook.

PixelFish VP of Sales and Marketing Stephen Condon told us in a phone interview that assets like Eyespot’s Mixer tool will allow clients to edit video on their own, doing things like swapping out voiceovers. The acquisition also gives PixelFish access to video publishing and transcoding tools, as well as a number of provisional patents for online video technologies.

According to Condon, the skeleton crew still with Eyespot will be brought on to help with the transition. Once that transition is complete, Pixelfish will assess whether to keep those employees on or not.

The news comes just days after Jumpcut, a onetime rival of Eyespot in the online video editing space that was acquired by Yahoo (s YHOO), announced that it would no longer be accepting video uploads. Eyespot, which shut down in October, had raised $3.7 $11 million and counted Demand Media and Lucasfilm as customers.

Jumpcut, the online video editing service acquired by Yahoo (s YHOO) in 2006, is no longer accepting video uploads to its service. From the Jumpcut upload page:

We’re sorry to announce that we are no longer accepting uploads to Jumpcut.

We will be keeping the Jumpcut site up and running for the foreseeable future so you‘ll still be able to play, remix and share your existing movies – you just won’t be able to upload anything new.

If you’re looking for a place to upload and share your video, we recommend that you head over to Flickr: http://flickr.com/explore/video

Thanks for all of your contributions to the Jumpcut community.

The Jumpcut Team

The main Jumpcut site, however, gives no indication that uploads aren’t being accepted, with messaging on the main Jumpcut site encouraging people to “upload,” “make a movie” and “explore.” The Jumpcut FAQ, meanwhile, includes:

Why did you turn off uploads?
It was a difficult decision that we wish we didn’t have to make, but it was necessary in order to focus resources on other Yahoo! sites.

Users who have uploaded video can still access and watch their movies on the site (for the “foreseeable future), but cannot download them completely because of technical limitations of the service, according to the Jumpcut FAQ.

Yahoo never did much with JumpCut — unless you count those presidential campaign mashups — and the service was never fully integrated into other Yahoo video offerings, at least not as much as it could have been.

While it isn’t officially “closed,” we’re not sure how long for this world a video editing site is if you can’t upload video to it. This is the second major video service Yahoo has disabled this month, following the closure of the Yahoo Live live-streaming.

Hat tip to TechCrunch.

file:///Users/hannah/Desktop/final%20project

Above is a link to the conversation Rohit and I had concerning our final project via Facebook Chat. This was just a day after Rohit had returned from Bangkok and he told me about his experience. It is very interesting and it also gave me a unique perspective looking at the photos he had uploaded onto Jumpcut. I felt very isolated and safe listening to his story and looking at the photos and i uploaded a video that expressed those feelings to me. It worked very well with music that Rohit downloaded… we added photos and tweaked the audio and placed words in the frames as well as splicing up the original video. I really like the ‘Ken Burns’ fade-outs and the way my video was spliced thru the photos in the end.  My computer is giving me problems with the sound but Rohit sais the audio works fine; the audio is a combination of added tracks by Rohit and audio by me off the pre-recorded videos… I really like the end result and I think it was fascinating to work on this project with Rohit, particularly to hear about his experience in the midst of a government crushing protest, but also to create art with someone thousands of miles away. I look forward to doing it again! Here’s a link to our film:
http://www.jumpcut.com/groups/detail?g_id=1D8DBF82C4D811DDB177000423CF4092

Hope y’all enjoy!

Jumpcut.com

“is a website that provides free video editing and hosting services. The website was launched as a private alpha in January 2006 and as a public beta on April 4, 2006. Since October 2006 Jumpcut has been owned by Yahoo.”

Wikipedia

i was considering doing something like this as my final year project, it was going to be called video jigsaw and users could create their own videos from other clips. but it has been done, done well, baught by Yahoo and well … not been a huge success. but its been around for a little less time than you tube, looks incredibly powerful, free to use and has a tiny amount of users compared to you Tube

Why?

i think we can all agree that video sharing sites fall into the catch 22 of social networking sites where the most useful one is the one with the most users. Even though for a long time you tube had inferior video quality that’s where you would upload anything because that’s where it would get most views because it had the most users.

Think it shows that even if you have a kick ass idea and some one big like yahoo behind you it can still pale in comparison to the tryed and tested.

I may need to eat my words soon, hope so.

So working on this final project has been an interesting experience.  Our group ended up with 4 members which is good from the perspective of having lots of ideas and input. On the down side it made scheduling any group meetings difficult.

After the initial email process of connecting as a group, we tried to connect a few times in secondlife. The most successful of those for me was the time we stayed in the theatre on funksoup island after the class meeting in secondlife.  Plumeria and Stephanie have already described this meeting on the blog, so I won’t go into detail. There was a second, secondlife meeting will the three other group members that I unfortunately missed, which seemed to be successful as well.

During our secondlife meeting we discussed theme ideas for the final mashup project and decided to take photos of locations in which we live or have visited and put together a jumpcut of locations with still images and sound.

Plumeria started the file with some beautiful shots of hawaii. All of her images were of nature in some way… ocean, volcano, tree.  I had planned on using some images from a recent trip to france and after seeing Plumeria’s images I decided to use only images of stone and steel construction from france in direct contrast to the nature of Hawaii.

The process of using jumpcut was fairly simple.  The site is pretty user friendly.  That said I probably should have watched some sort of tutorial before jumping in.  I started editing the clip Plumeria started and was playing around and ended up messing up some of the settings she used on her images. At first I was a bit worried about this and then I realized that this is part of the process.  Anything I add is changing the piece so if I changed some of her original settings, it was OK.  The other members of our group will probably change my settings when they add their images, and that’s OK too.

Once I finished editing the images, transitions, actions etc… I tried to edit the audio.  Plumeria had added an audio file and I tried to add an Edith Piaf (famous french singer) song for my images thinking it would be neat to have different music for the different images but it didn’t work.  Once I uploaded the audio, it played both files at the same time. Turns out (as far as I know) you can’t restrict the audio per image at least using jumpcut’s features. I ended up just removing the Piaf file so it wouldn’t be confusing for a viewer.

So at this point, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with our project and how it changes through the process.  Who knows, maybe another jumpcut user will edit or remix our work… wouldn’t that be interesting!  That’s it for now.

I know I haven’t been a regular on the blogging scene (death in the family) but this class has really moved me forward in knowing more of what i can do on the internet and what it can do for me. Somethings never change though, like the real world stopping folks from communicating, and that has been the issue with our final project. I was in Texas without internet connections which made it difficult for Terry and I but more importantly, Rohit was in Bangkok being held ‘hostage’ by the airport takeover! Well I finally got the ball rolling with our first entry.
jumpcut.com/hannahclong
But I’m not sure if I have it set up so that they can find it. I know i’ve set it up so that anyone can edit it, but i’m concerned that a person outside the project might fiddle with it. I’ll keep ya posted!

Are you in Model UN?  Do you have a passion for literature?  Does having primary scientific research at your fingertips make you giddy?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, drop by the library this Friday at 11:45 for a Library Lunch Bite workshop about three of the databases added to the Maggie Walker research toolbox this year:  CIAO, Literary Reference Center, and Science Direct.

Workshops last 15-20 minutes and you are welcome to bring your lunch.

Mark your calendar for these December sessions too:

• Dec. 5 – Google Docs revisited (now with a forms feature for online surveys, quizzes and polls)
• Dec. 12 – Jumping into film-making with JumpCut (a free online video creation/editing/sharing tool from Yahoo!)

No estamos tan lejos de llegar algún día a esto. Afírmate.

Cada día es más común el hecho de ver un video a través del internet. Sitios como Youtube, Vimeo, entre otros sitios, se han transformado de alguna en parte de esta memoria colectiva que todos cultivamos en la web que con el correr del tiempo crece de manera totalmente exponencial. 

Y no son sólo los sitios que nombramos anteriormente, sino que el fenómeno de la televisión por internet ha sido una plataforma muy útil para los diversos canales de televisión tradicional, llevando la tradicional competencia a este formato. Y ojo que no decimos fenómeno gratuitamente, si no que con mucho fundamento, puesto que en el año 2006, la mayor feria tecnológica del mundo, la Computer Electronic Show (CES), le otorgó a la televisión por internet el título de “fenómeno tecnológico” del año.

 Pero ¿Cuál es la gran ventaja de la televisión por internet? por una parte, está la posibilidad de ver programas emitidos afuera del territorio nacional. El sueño de ver ese programa del que tu amigo Irlandés tanto te habló, con este fenómeno es posible. 

Por otro lado, el mundo de la seguridad es un tema recurrente a la hora de hablar de internet. Tenemos virus, troyanos y todas esas cosas que sumadas a la (des)gracia de no tener censura, transforman a la televisión en internet en un arma poderosa para la transmisión de contenidos, ya sean estos malos, o buenos.

Youtube ha sido uno de los sitios más importantes a la hora de hablar de televisión por Internet

 En Internet, podemos encontrarnos con grandes grandes herramientas de destinadas al “leseo” de la población, como también podemos encontrar el manual para fabricar bombas atómicas en cinco segundos. En el video, podrán encontrarse, con la mirada de diversos expertos sobre la comunicación a través de internet. Miradas como la de los chicos de difamadores, quienes a través de la Tv por internet, han hecho reír a miles de fanáticos con sus irónicas miradas. También está la mirada experta de Eduardo Rodriguez y la de unos pioneros como Álvaro Díaz, de TheClinicTV, que de a poco están haciendo ruido con sus chistosos videos. Míralo, comentanos y dinos que te parece. Todo esto una vez más, cortesía de DemosTV

“He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life.”

- Victor Hugo

Last night, my son and I went to see the legendary comedian, Bill Cosby. I’ve loved Bill Cosby since my teens when I would listen to him over and over again on the record player. My son, who aspires to be a comedian some day, discovered the comedy of Bill Cosby on, you guessed it – YouTube – and like me, he watches him over and over again. However, I’ve noticed that there’s a difference between my experience with Cosby and my son’s experience. Whereas I could only imagine what Cosby looked like when he told his stories, my son gets the whole effect – a complete visual and aural experience through video – and that, I admit, conveys a powerful emotional punch.

Before the days of YouTube and various other multimedia sharing sites that have cropped up in the past three or four years, to be successful, comedians would have to have been “discovered” by an executive of a large television network or broadcasting corporation. Although this still holds true to some extent today, now anyone with a microphone, video recording device and Internet access can share their stories with anyone around the world. In essence, they are now empowered to do their own advertising and don’t have to wait to be discovered by the powers that be.

There are numerous instances in the past few years where the average person has risen to instant fame (albeit it often very short-lived fame) due to a video they have posted online. Free, multimedia online sites that allow you to create and share audio, images and video are booming. Such sites also allow you to add user profiles, give ratings, tag favorites and add comments (Lamb, p. 2). No longer do the videos you create have to be stored on your own computer using up valuable file space.

Now it is possible to upload media onto online servers which allow others to view your work or allow you to post your video to your own websites, blogs, wikis and other social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. As the Participatory Media Guidebook point outs, if you had to pay for your own hosting and distributing infrastructure for multimedia, it would be very expensive and require a lot of technical expertise to maintain. But now even young children can combine words, pictures, sounds, animation and video into “persuasive, powerful and empowering communication vehicles that can be shared with millions around the world.”

The Art of Storytelling

One of the reasons why Bill Cosby has been so successful over the past fifty years is that he is a masterful storyteller. The comedian, Chris Rock, when he mentors young comics, passes on a lesson he learned from watching Cosby: “It is not the punch line, dude. It is the setup!” (Winnipeg Free Press, Oct. 30, 2008, p. D4). Cosby has a way of taking the stories of his life or life in general and spinning them into tales that engage the audience in a very personal way. He knows that life is full of stories. Our stories are the threads that connect our past to our present and will influence us in the future. They help us make sense of our lives and connect us with others in ways that both touch the soul and the mind.

Like Cosby, we’ve always told our stories about our lives and what we know to be true and we will continue to tell them through traditional methods but now, with the advent of various free Web 2.0 multimedia creating and sharing sites such as voicethread and jumpcut, if we have the skills and knowledge we can tell and share our stories in a new and exciting way – through the digital world via the World Wide Web.

“Digital storytelling is a modern take on an oral and written tradition that traces back to early human history as a way of passing down institutional knowledge and beliefs from generation to generation” (Bolch, p. 2).

Like paintings, digital stories that mix images, graphics, sound, and music with the author’s own storytelling voice will exist over time and be enjoyed long past their creation. The digital story is organized around the author’s own voice as the centerpiece of content while “artistically dancing multisensory elements into personal understandings about self, family, knowledge, ideas, events, or experiences.”

The Multimedia Learning Experience

Students can now use cutting-edge technology to bring the age-old art of storytelling from the spoken and written tradition into the digital age” (Bolch, p. 1). Since we know that the digital world is where our students are often most comfortable, using Web 2.0 tools to share their insights and knowledge can be powerful learning tools. The lessons learned through the creation of multimedia presentations can help students understand the multifaceted media world they find themselves in, demonstrate their knowledge in any subject and make connections as contributing members of society with the world around them.

As students tell their own personal stories of what they know and understand, digital storytelling gives them a chance to display their learning and connect with others who may have had similar experiences. The storyteller is able to weave his or her voice into an unfolding multimedia experience and in the process, touch the hearts of those who view it. In this way, the creator becomes connected to the audience and humanity as a whole.

By its very definition, multimedia presentations are excellent learning tools since they engage and affect students on so many levels – emotionally, intellectually and physically (if stories are acted out). When any combination of text, sound, pictures or motion video are displayed at the same time, the stories that are told create a powerful punch. Like Block (p. 2), I have witnessed on a personal level that students who are not usually engaged with traditional teaching methods suddenly become engaged when teachers allow students to express what they have learned using multimedia tools. Multimedia projects give all students an opportunity to express themselves creatively in a medium they are used to and they take a greater sense of ownership of the learning process since they know their work will be viewed by others. In “This Digital Storytelling,” author Angela Zukowski writes that creativity is a by-product of the multimedia medium since the resources available to the creator are “virtually limitless” (p. 1).

Digital storytelling brings multiple skills, challenges and benefits to the learning process. “Designing information requires learning a new type of grammar beyond writing words that helps students to deepen their understanding of content while increasing their visual, sound, oral language and information literacy skills.” Memory structures are enhanced as students must organization information into a logical format and tell what they know to be true. Digital storytelling gives students a chance to reflect on the material as it relates to them and therefore “find deep connections with the subject matter of a course” (Zukowski, p. 2). As Robert Shanks states in “Tell Me a Story,” the stories created will then be remembered by the creators for the rest of their lives because it has become a part of them.

It is through the process of reflecting and shaping the telling of the storytelling of what we know and understand from an event or topic that provides a “sense-making” process that stays with the learner over time. Some learning theorists believe that storytelling can be applied effectively to nearly any subject (Zukowski, p. 1). The more information that comes at us the more we need to take the time to think and reflect on what that information means to us. Digital storytelling allows us to do this.

As I was preparing this blog post, I came across an interesting article about two college professors, Annie Prud’homme Genereux and William A. Thompson, who decided to try a new type of reflective tool as a way of having students describe what they had learned on a particular topic in their course. Up until this time, they had used more traditional reflective practices such as journaling but these were not sparking much enthusiasm. What they found after having students generate reflections of their course using a multimedia tool was that the students were far more engaged in the process, they appreciated learning a new skill and being able to express themselves in a creative way and they had a lot of fun in the process.

Zukowski believes that the deeper impact of digital storymaking comes not so much from developing proficiency with multimedia applications but learning how to think critically about media. He writes, “We want students not only to learn with media, but also to learn and think critically about media. Digital stories provide powerful media-literacy learning opportunities because students are involved in the creation and analysis of the media in which they are immersed” (p. 3). The educational organization called YouthLearn emphasizes this point. On their website they state that preparing students for life in the 21^st century as global citizens means ensuring that they are literate in media methods. They believe that the more students know about the intention behind various media and how to interpret content, the more they’ll begin to use technology as a tool for their own self-expression and personal development.”

What Do I Mean by “Stories”?

By stories, I do not mean just the type that students write as a form of personal expression although they can be. I use the term “digital storytelling” to encompass a wide range of communication formats including narrative, information/expository, persuasive, participatory and reflective writing. According to Digitales, a wide variety of digital stories can be created using multimedia formats such as personal stories, myths and folk tales, short stories (narrative), summary reports, book reports, how-to directions, biographies/autobiographies (information/expository), advertisements, describe/conclude, analyze/conclude, analyze/persuade, compare/contrast, cause/effect (persuasive), opinion (participatory) and reflecting.

Specific Ideas For Multimedia Learning

Before embarking on a multimedia production with students, I would suggest checking out some sites that have examples of student multimedia work. Two wonderful sites I found for this purpose were Apple Student Gallery and

Adobe Digital Kids Club. If you’re looking for tips, storytelling techniques, lessons and activities and training, I would suggest you take a look at the following sites:

Abobe Digital Kids Club Lessons and Activities

YouthLearn: Lessons and Activites

YouthLearn: Teaching Multimedia Skills

Digitales

Within the Digital site, there are several examples of multimedia lessons and activities. These include:

Personal Stories: Creating Living Memories Around Defining Moments of Life

Kinship Stories: Family Stories of Who We Are

Hyper-Interactive Stories: Group Stories with Diverse Paths and Endings Personal Expression: Creating Visual Expressions of Thoughts and Feelings

Myths, Legends and Tales: Past, Present and Future of Self, Family or Ideas

Informative or Expository Stories: Information Beyond Words

Persuasive Stories: Influencing and Impacting Others

Itza Wrap: Stories of Lessons Learned

Future Vision Stories: Imagining the Future Now

Conclusion

Digital storytelling gives everyone a unique experience of discovering their own voice and talents. Along the way, students discover that they have something worth sharing with others and multimedia sharing sites make this possible. From what I have witnessed in my own school, using multimedia to share individual stories and demonstrate learning are powerful ways of learning. Although they take time to produce, the results are well worth it!

References (Other Than Those Hyperlinked)

Bolch, M. (May, 2008). Show and tell. T.H.E. Journal, 35(5), 1-4. Retrieved Oct. 28, 2008, from the Proquest Database.

Genereux, A.P. , & Thompson, W.A. (Jul,/Aug,, 2008). Lights, camera, reflection! Digital movies: A tool for reflective learning. Journal of College Science Teaching, 37(6), 21-25. Retrieved Oct. 28, 2008, from the Proquest Database.

Lamb, A. (Dec., 2007). Video and the web, part 2: Sharing and social networking. Teacher Librarian, 35(2), 1-7. Retrieved Oct. 28, 2008, from the Proquest Database.

Zukowski, A.A. (Feb./Mar., 2008). This digital storytelling. Momentum, 39(1), 1-4). Retrieved Oct. 28, 2008, from the Proquest Database.

Today at the NABJ Multimedia Conference in Nashville, Mary Stanton and I learned how to create a video using Jumpcut. In the process we learned how to use iMovie and CuePrompter.

In today’s age of fast progress and in a generation with smart and savvy individuals who want to make sure they accomplish as much in their time by multitasking, newspapers are competing against time and machine communications such as with computers and the internet. Much of the extra time in the general demographics of newspaper article readers is now spent online. What the major threat here is that newspapers have to compete against time spent online versus time spent with a traditional newspaper and what value the consumer places against both. In other words, people need to be attracted more to one or the other to choose which one they will use for their source of information and news events. At first my thoughts were on the fact that computers are the new wave of the future and it might be a trend for people to just go online but then I thought about the workforce and companies that hire employees, then thought about schools and their teachers and students, most of them use computers as part of their daily routine and not because they like to but because they have to, so when certain information is needed in regards to current events they can easily click on a browser and log on to a newspaper website instead of trying to drive around and find a stand or wait for the next volume of the paper to arrive at their doorstep.

Although perception of the internet gives the user a certain degree of openness and the right to free information, the internet evolution and its progress has been built upon by corporations that rely on advertising dollars to keep them “afloat”. From the very start of newspapers along with others have had part of their company structure and growth to thank from advertising revenues. Advertisers can now see that newspapers can have big visitor numbers towards their websites just as in the decades before the internet they had true subscribers. This helps the newspapers survive by transitioning their advertising revenues that were typically made from the newspaper classifieds, marketing and the such to transition into the new media format and keep people reading. People still feel conformable on relying these newspapers for bringing them news because they are established entities that have been around from generation to generation so there is a certain degree in which newspapers can count on in regards to customer loyalty and readership for generations to come. I, personally would rather read the news about an event from The Los Angeles Times then some Joe blows blog in the middle of the internet ocean (like me) . Although perception has it that newspapers are bias, intelligent people can count on the fact that reliable newspapers either on the internet or in print will more than likely not have any propaganda attached to their editorials. So part of it is the easy transition from print to digital as far as sales and bringing in revenues and from trust that people still have in newspapers.

I’m not always a fan of the Advanced Placement mentality.   However, I will have to say that one of the best things about the AP Lang curriculum is this little objective that I have to cover:

Students will learn to analyze image (including film and media) as text.

I have, until this week (where we’re exploring narrative modes), avoided the temptation of diving into the language of film.  This week, I am indulging in this temptation!  I am not always a fan of showing movies in class; however, I am a huge fan of showing clips in class as an example.  I do show a couple of things each year, maybe one or two short (read: less than 30 minutes) pieces per unit, and then a couple of clips.  This week, though, I’ve gone hog wild.  

We concluded our unit on politics and the press by watching a full film:  Citizen Kane.  I’ve never shown this to high schoolers before, and walked them through it- both the narrative and the technical terminology and techniques innovated by Welles, but that are so familiar to us today.  The students did all right with it.

Here are some of the clips I’ve presented for understanding:

Cross-Cut style editing (which, as we discussed in class, correlates with implicit transitions in writing)-  Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey, My Favorite Year

The Wipe (which, again discussed, correlates with explicit transitions in writing)-  Star Wars

Jump-Cuts (section and/or chapter breaks, particularly in fiction):  Lawrence of Arabia

Parallel Structure- Then we played with structure, particularly parallel structure in narratives and in image: The opening and closing images in Kane, the final images in The Phantom Menace and Star Wars, musically recurring themes at the beginning, middle, and end of Sondheim’s Into the Woods.  We discussed, in addtion, the structure of Harry Potter novels, and the first twenty minutes of Fellowship of the Ring and the last twenty minutes of Return of the King.  The four hobbits start off in the first movie at the party, all happy and gay.  The last twenty minutes, they’re in the tavern, everybody dancing but the four main hobbits, sitting in silence (there’s also the twin scenes of Sam afraid to ask Rosie to dance in FotR, but approaching her in RotK).   The kids, through discussion (and some background knowledge of Hero’s Journey thinking) arrived at one of the advantages of beginning and ending a story in the same or similar places or locales can reveal that, like the hobbits, by showing characters back in their original environments, the inner changes of the characters become hugely more apparent.

Inverted Structure- The opening shots and closing shots of The Godfather.   We begin in black, and the funeral director gives a long speech in a single take (“I believe in America…”).  The camera pulls back further and further from him into the lit room with Marlon Brando.  It is expansive in the cinematography.  Then we look at the final scene, where Kay confronts Michael in his office.  It is open and light.   Kay leaves the office, and we view Michael, but only in half the scene, through a doorway arch.  The shot becomes tighter, contracts further, and Michael’s office is more obscured.  Then the door is closed on Kay, and it wipes to black- a perfect inversion of the opening shots.

My kids gained a little from this.  We are actually going to undertake some fiction writing, on a more formal level than I have ever engaged in before with my regular high school kids (as opposed to GHP).  The kids haven’t written anything yet, but have an idea- some only a single thematic word- to start with, and today I asked them to decide on an opening and closing image for their narratives.  The images can be visually or thematically identical, and did not have to obviously connect to their idea.   There were some fantastic images that they came up with on the spur of the moment-  A cello in the corner of a room and sheet music scatttered across a wood paneled floor; A one eyed doll being opened and the eye opening- the closing image is the doll being put to rest, now with two eyes, both closing; an athlete exiting a tunnel onto a field.  Just a lot of really neat images, some with correlations to the ideas, some not.  If there’s anything worth reporting on this in the future, I’ll report.  (I don’t know where I’m going with this narrative fiction writing assignment yet; I’m feeling it as I go- and it’s awesome.)  If there are any noteworthy results, I’m sure you realize I’ll post them.