I have finally picked the topic for my digital story and will look into what makes people happy.  I am interested in creating a short digital story on this as I think it will be fascinating to see the myriad of ways that unique individuals experience happiness.  I have some concrete ideas about what I will portray in my digital story (images, interviews, video clips), but before I get into this I need to get a handle on the technical aspects involved in the creation process.

I have spent several days researching on-line the concept of digital storymaking, looking at what makes a good story, and exploring the different apps that I can use to create my video.  I have come across a tonne of websites, blogs and even an Ed Tech MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) devoted to this topic.  Some of the better practical resources I have  discovered include the Educational Technology and Mobile Learning resource site, a wiki describing 50+ ways to tell a story, and a video blog (vlog) which gives five tips on how to shoot a video with just an iPhone.  There truly is a world of resources at my fingertips; in truth, it is mind boggling!

Eventually, I will be using the digital storytelling technique in school with my students, so I have decided the process needs to be as simple and accessible as possible.  I will aim to shoot and create my entire digital story only by using either my iPhone or iPad, as many of my students also have smart phones or other portable devices.  I will also use either iMovie (Mac) or Moviemaker (PC) edit my video, knowing that they are similar in both functionality and form and the school and my students have access to these applications.  I downloaded the iMovie app ($4.99) onto my iPad and thought I’d play around with it a bit before delving into the topic of ‘Happiness’.  Without spending a lot of time, I was able to piece together a short video featuring my kids, Logan and Mila. (*postscript:  I was going to try and embed it here, but I can only do that by publishing it on YouTube and I just don’t feel comfortable doing that.  This is something I will have to keep in mind when creating my Happiness video – how to share the content.  Perhaps, I will need to edit it on my computer, rather than just the iPhone or Ipad, so I have more options for saving it as a video file).

I still have many questions to explore related to incorporating good audio quality into my videos as I will be conducting interviews for my Happiness Project.  I thought I’d turn to social media to pose the question….as of now, I have only received feedback from one person, but I expect others will comment as the night progresses:

The next steps in my journey are to create a storyboard to help me get focused on what message or story I wish to convey.  The storyboarding process is akin to creating an outline for more ‘traditional’ forms of writing and representing, and it is an essential and necessary part of the process.  Hmmm, I wonder if there is an app for storyboarding?!