This course really helped me broaden my horizons moving forward and made me think about a lot of interests that I had let slip to the wayside recently. I am planning on being a teaching assistant for the next academic year, and I’d like to use some of these ideas to hopefully make class more interesting and help students. It would be great to recommend resources to students to maybe help keep tasks interesting and broaden relationships with students. If classes move online, making an interactive video or cutting together footage for examples like some of the applications we have used in this course could keep any lectures or assignments refreshing. I’d like to use these tools to make class more unique for students, and not just the same monotonous boring lectures some students might expect.
It also helped reengage my interest in a lot of digital media. With work and school, I’ve let a lot of interest in digital media like podcasts, video games, film and streaming just slip away due to time constraints. I found that a lot of the content we covered in the course I used to love consuming, and have been more and more as class has gone on. I’ve gone back to listening to podcasts, I love reading interactive stories online, and because of this class, I try to look for interesting interactive stories to help relieve stress and still stay engaged and up to date.
I will also be using some of the information gathered to assist with my thesis. I am looking at communication strategies for big news organizations on coverage of COVID-19, and this experience helps me identify narratives and trends that some organizations slowly and subtly build on in their reporting. This course has helped reignite my interest in digital media and digital storytelling, and provided me with opportunities to continue with moving forward.
This course has really inspired me – so much that I am going to use what I have learned to create a digital storytelling project for my Master’s program. I am thinking I might use Google Earth, although I would like to use something VR-based too. I want to gather stories about a specific event in history or a physical location. Ideally, the stories will consist of text as well as other media like images and sound. I’m not sure about the details just yet, but once I have it figured out I will utilize the many aspects of digital storytelling to create a sense of space that can be shared with others. Hopefully, it will bring together digital storytelling and some of that personal touch we get with oral storytelling. This way, the person accessing them can immerse themselves in the stories and better understand the environment and energy surrounding that space or time, creating a sort of a living history that can be accessed by future generations. I’m really excited about it! Also, I have a nine-year-old that loves technology. I am hoping he can work with me on this project and that it will be a fun challenge for him, as well as a good experience we can share between mother and son.
In addition to ideas for my Master’s project, learning about the different types of platforms out there has me wanting to explore. For example, I never really got into podcasts — they came out when I was a little older and didn’t really have time to check them out. There is a lot of conversation and storytelling going on that I have been missing! I would like to use podcasts at story time when I’m too tired to read anything. We can just sit and listen together. I would also like to explore some for myself to listen to in the mornings while I drink my coffee. It brings back fond memories of the storybook records I listened to as a child. Looking forward to podcasts and more!