Week 7: Digital Storytelling

In class we discussed and looked at a bunch of different sites that allow you to create videos, slideshows, animations and other examples of digital storytelling. Digital storytelling is clearly the wave of the future. We watched examples of simple animations that were used to teach lessons and tell stories. They were far more interesting and captivating than a lecture would have been. Digital storytelling can be a great tool to be used in classrooms to keep the attention of students. I was surprised to learn about all the sites out there that you can use for free. For homework we had to create our own example of digital storytelling using one of the sites, and I used Animoto. Animoto lets you upload pictures and music to create a soundslide presentation. The most amazing part is that the whole thing takes less than 15 minutes to put together.

Digital storytelling may even become the future of journalism. As newspapers decline in readership and advertising sales, it is obvious that they will not be around forever. As a journalist, that means you must be able to tell stories and relay information in many other ways. I am very happy I got a taste of digital storytelling and now know how to put some stories together. This is a really cool tool that I will definitely use in my journalism classes in the future.

Here is a link to a really cool site dedicated to digital storytelling. It is a non profit organization that shares people's stories and assists them in using multimedia to tell them.

Center for Digital Storytelling

Week 3: Web Technology

This week in class we discussed new technology on the Internet and Web 2.0. According to Wikipedia.com, one of the most used Web 2.0 sites, Web 2.0 facilitates interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Some of the most well known Web 2.0 sites are Facebook, Blogger, Myspace and Flickr. Web 2.0 has been dubbed the future of the Internet, and I believe rightfully so. With so many people having access to the Internet, it is becoming a global crossroads where each and every user can create and be published with the click of a mouse. We looked through a list of Web 2.0 applications and wrote forum posts about three of them. I had not realized how many interactive, user created sites were out there.
I am a journalism major and have plans to go to law school. Web 2.0 and new technology on the Internet are very relevant to my field. Journalism is evolving and its future is very unclear. Newspapers are disappearing every minute and the news is being reported on the Internet. Web 2.0 sites such as Twitter, Blogger and many more allow essentially anyone with an Internet hookup to become a journalist. Many columnists and reporters of major newspapers also keep their own blogs now. In order to get ahead in Journalism you must master all of these tools.
Here is a link to the Web 2.0 wikipedia page: Web 2.0
check it out to learn more.
The following are links to some very interesting Web 2.0 sites that are worth taking a look at:

Freezly is a site dedicated to informing people about all the free stuff that is out there on the internet. It collects all the information on Twitter about giveaways and freebies and posts them in one place so users can easily find them and try to win.

TheSummarizer is a site that compiles all of the tweets about a topic for you. You can search by keyword and read everything people have posted about a particular person, place or anything you're interested in. This is a really cool tool to use and stay informed.