College of Education
Dept. of Curriculum & Instruction
Instructional Technology Program

CUIN 7358:
Educational Uses of Digital Photography
& Digital Storytelling

fall 2008

This course is linked with CUIN 7336: Popular Culture in Education

 October 8, 2008: Class Six      Course Discussion Blog         Student Blogs        return to main page

Topics for Class Six:

Review Assignments from Class 5

The Engines of Our Ingenuity

Assignments for Next Class:
  * Reading Assignments
  * Blog Assignments
  * Hands-On Assignment 6
 

Review Assignments from Last Class

Hands-On Assignment:
For this week's hands-on assignment, you should add narration and either computer-generated music or real music to the digital story you created last week.
 

Blog Assignment:

Go to your personal blog and post a message in which you first include the new URL of the video file you created for this week's hands-on assignment, and then post any questions or comments you have about the process you went through in completing this work.

More Questions about Photo Story
 

Is there a limit to the length of time that the recording for each photo can be?
I haven’t actually tried it myself, but have read that you can record up to five minutes of narration for each picture in the story.

Why does narrated audio fade out too soon at the end of the story?

Photo Story 3 is designed so that the audio (which the developers probably thought would usually be music) fades out on the last slide. This is nice if the audio is music, but not so good if the audio is someone speaking. There are two ways to try to fix this problem. The first method is the simplest and it may work some of the time, but not always. You can try to increase the amount of time that the last slide stays on the screen. You can do this by going to the Customize Motion screen in PS3 and  clicking on the Number of Seconds to display this picture button and set the time to longer than the default setting of 5 seconds.



You will need to check to see how long the narration lasts and then make the last slide a few seconds longer than that. If you have recorded the narration for the last slide within Photo Story, you might try deleting the narration on that slide, increasing the length of time it will stay on the screen, and then re-recording the narration (just for that slide).

Engines of Our Ingenuity Project

The Engines of Our Ingenuity is a radio program that tells the story of how our culture is formed by human creativity. Written and hosted by Dr. John Lienhard, M.D. Anderson Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering and History at the University of Houston. Engines episodes are heard throughout the country on National Public Radio and produced by KUHF-FM Houston. More information about the program may be found online at: http://www.uh.edu/engines/ 

The following digital stories are attempts at adding a visual component to the audio-only versions of Engines episodes and are presented here with Dr. Lienhard's permission.

Chartres Cathedral	Medical Oath	Tallest, Longest
Fingerprints	A Walk Uptown	Moonfall: 1969
Time and Efficiency	Camera Obscura	Honor the Dream
Malt Balls or M&Ms	Black and White	The Medieval West

As part of the course, students will select one Engines episode and add visual images to it. You can see a list of all episodes at: http://www.uh.edu/engines/keywords.htm

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Hoaxes!
http://hoaxes.coe.uh.edu/

 

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Assignments for Next Class:

Reading Assignments:

'Fair Use' Confusion Threatens Media Literacy
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=7430

Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use
http://centerforsocialmedia.org/rock/backgrounddocs/bestpractices.pdf

The Good, the Bad, and the Confusing: User-Generated Video Creators on Copyright
http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/files/pdf/good_bad_confusing.pdf

Hands-On Assignment 6:

For this week's hands-on assignment, you should select an episode from the Engines of Our Ingenuity website (http://uh.edu/engines/) that you will use for the Engines assignment that is due on Wednesday, November 5, 2008. For this midterm project assignment, you will create a digital story using images that you find to illustrate the narration of the episode you selected. You may also add music if you think it will enhance the presentation. Refer to the example episodes shown above to see how these audio episodes look with images and music added.

The Engines episode you select may be on any topic (related to popular culture or not).

Click here for instructions on how to download the audio file of the Engines episode that you want to use.

For this week, you should begin looking for and saving images that can be used to illustrate the episode you selected. Also, make sure that you can download the audio file of the episode as we did in this week's class.

Personal Engines Blog Assignment (6a) -Selecting an Episode:

Also, please post a comment on your personal blog in which you describe the particular Engines episode you plan to use for the midterm project, why you like this topic and selected it, and please include the episode number. Remember, that some episodes have been redone (and improved) by Dr. Lienhard, so make sure that if you find two episodes on the same topic, select the most recent one (the one with the higher number).

Course Discussion Blog Assignment (6b):

Go to the Course Discussion Blog (http://cuin7358-pop.blogspot.com/) and post a comment in which you discuss one or more topics you are considering for your final semester project. Beginning next week, you will be asked to begin writing a first draft of a script on the topic you plan to use for the final project. So for this week's blog posting, you should include a brief outline of at least some of the major themes you think may be included in your project.