Digital Storytelling Project Reflections

My final project finally got published! YES!!! I was excited to get it out there because I kept having to redo it. First it was too long. I discovered I had to delete the whole thing in Voicethread and upload all my pictures and slides again. Every time I pared it down it meant cutting slides and starting all over again. It kept getting easier as I knew exactly which pictures I should leave in my project and which ones I could delete. I must have started over 5 times. What I found out in Voicethread, too, is if you upload a picture, you can't delete it. To get rid of it I had to start over every time. I kept changing my narration, cutting out what didn't have to be there and adding a better opening and ending, so as to have some consistency in the project.
I know working with students on such a project, even a short, biographical sketch of themselves, would take a lot of time. Multimedia projects such as this means allowing time for students to be in a lab setting for a great portion of the day, or work on it at home, like we did. That isn't always possible with all students. I did find the project frustrating at times, especially trying to get the photos edited and the timing right. I spent time practicing what I was saying, too, just to try to sound as natural as I could. Knowing what I went through will definitely help me in planning out the time students would need to complete a project such as this. Now I'd go and do a project, feeling more comfortable in what I'm doing and asking the students to do. Now that I've got my project embedded, I feel I've not only learned something, but accomplished something as well.