Topic of the Week 7

July 8, 2010 StormAshley

For our topic of the week for week seven we were to complete a course called Five Steps to Multimedia Storytelling. The first step of the course focused on choosing a story. Here I learned that the best multimedia stories are multi-dimensional. I learned that multimedia stories are nonlinear, which means you engage readers by by letting them choose which elements to read and when to read them.

When choosing a story it is important to keep the main characteristics in mind. Since middle school I have always been taught to develop my paper by breaking it up by paragraphs, but here they advise you not to do so which I found surprising. They said to focus more on “this part” and “that thought.”

The next step in this course was making a storyboard. Here I learned that creating a story board involves three parts. The first part is defining the elements. The second part is identifying the media. the third part is storyboard the concept. I wish they had gone into more detail about this step, I would have liked to learn more about each part.

I found step three to be the most helpful. We had activity that we had to complete and it involved choosing the right equipment for a backpack journalist. I found it surprising, how many tools they needed in case of an emergency on set.

The final step was producing the story. I learned that both print reporters and and multimedia reporters organize and shape they’re stories the same way. I found it surprising that they use different tools to decide which elements to choose for the story. Here the web designer for your site will serve as your editor.

Overall, I found this course to be helpful. I liked the activity that they offered it gave me a better idea of what making a story implied. However this course took me longer than the other courses have taken. I still enjoyed it.

http://www.newsu.org/node/338

Entry Filed under: Topic of the Week

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