Food Sign-Up Sheet for Last F2F Class on May 9

Hello Everyone,

Please post a comment in which you indicate what food item you will bring to our final class meeting on Saturday, May 9, 2009. Remember that we said we would meet from 9:30am to 12:30pm.

So far, Lynda  said she will bring sausage kolaches.

And I will bring bagels and cream cheese, plus plates and napkins.

Guidelines for Submitting Final Semester Projects and Final Semester Project Reports

In addition to completing the final semester project, you should submit a final semester project report. This report should include a summary of the work you completed for the final semester project, including:

• a description of the final project
  

• the major objectives of the project
  

• why you selected this topic
  

• Who the intended audience is for your work
  

• What items in the project changed from the early stages of selecting the topic through completion of the final project
  

• any challenges you faced in creating this project and how you overcame them
  

• What the most significant things you learned from from completing the final project
  

•  any other information you feel would help in describing your work on the final semester project

Submission Information

Final semester projects and project reports should be sent to Dr. Robin by email:
brobin@uh.edu 

Files that are over 10 megabytes will proably exceed the file size limit for College of Education email. So, if you have created a digital story or you have a file larger than 10MB, please send the file with:

YouSendIt
http://www.yousendit.com/  

Discussion Assignment Twelve

Review the EUODS website find at least one place on the site that you feel needs to be updated because the material is either not relevant to our audience, contains inaccurate or outdated information, or does not include information that was discovered this semester that you feel should be included.
 
You may find it helpful to take a look at a page from the EUODS site that was recently updated.
 
 First, take a look at the original page on search engines at:
 http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/Copy%20of%20search_engines.html
 
 You will notice that this page includes links to several common search engines. However, this information is not very helpful because many visitors to our website would probably already know about these resources. Also, a rating in numbers of stars is included for each search engine but this is confusing since there is no indication about where this ranking came from, what the stars are based on, whether this ranking was from another website or simply made up by the author of the page (a student in one our earlier IT courses) and it includes ranking of news search capabilities, which probably have less interest to our web visitors than searches for specific content. In addition, there is no actual connection to digital storytelling in any of the text on this page.
 
 Compare that original page to the same page that was recently updated:
 http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/search_engines.html
 
When you have completed your exploration, post a message in which you describe the location you feel should be updated and discuss what type of new information might be contained on the page you are writing about.
  

Free Graphics Software & Screen Capture Programs

As we discussed in Saturday's F2F class, here is a link to some free graphics software programs:

http://www.snap2objects.com/2007/07/20/45-best-freeware-design-programs/

And for screen capture, try:

Jing Project
http://www.jingproject.com/

CamStudio
http://camstudio.org/

Reminder: Our Next Face-to-Face Class this Saturday, April 18, 2009

Our next face-to-face class will be held this coming Saturday, April 18, 2009. We will meet in Room 328 in the CITE Lab at UH from 9:00am until 12:00 noon.

Discussion Assignment Eleven

For this week's assignment, we were originally going to explore the use of hardware choices that could be used to support digital storytelling. This would include things like digital cameras, scanners, microphones, video camcorders, etc. However, since this topic was used as a midterm project by a couple of students, much of this information has already been found. If you have already begun conducting research on this topic, you may post a comment about what you have found.
 
 Another option is for you to try exploring some of the following information sources we have not touched on too much this semester--to see what you can find on the topic of "digital storytelling."
 
 The University of Houston Library Encore Library Catalog
 http://encore.lib.uh.edu 
 
 EdITLib Education & Information Technology Library
 http://www.editlib.org/
 
 Questia
 http://www.questia.com/Index.jsp
 
 The Chronicle of Higher Education
 http://chronicle.com/search/
 
 Slideworld
 http://www.slideworld.com/
 
 ERIC -Education Resources Information Center
 http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal
 
 The Library of Congress Online Catalog
 http://catalog.loc.gov/
 
 The Free Library
 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/
 
 The Internet Public Library
 http://www.ipl.org/
 
 Fondren Library at Rice University
 http://library.rice.edu/
 
 EDUCAUSE Site Search
 http://www.educause.edu/
 
 Google Book Search
 http://books.google.com/
 
 Kosmix
 http://www.kosmix.com/
 
 Cuil
 http://www.cuil.com/
 
 t10
 http://turbo10.com/
 
 Intute
 http://www.intute.ac.uk/
 
 When you have completed your exploration, post a message in which you describe what you found and please try to add some supporting information about how useful you think this information/tool would be to visitors to our website.

Discussion Assignment Ten

For this week's assignment, you should try to find examples of software applications that have not yet been discussed that might be used for digital storytelling. Finding information about software that can be used in the creation of digital stories can include any of the following:

• articles or websites that deal with specific software applications

• trial download versions

• tutorials that describe how the software works

• reviews that discuss whether it should be purchased/used

• examples projects created with a particular software program

• information about software that can be used in conjunction with digital storytelling, such as DVD authoring programs for putting digital stories on DVDs, graphic editing programs for improving images used in digital stories, programs used to create storyboards, etc.

• plus any other software programs that you think would be of interest to people who visit the EUODS website

Remember that you may discuss traditional software applications (that normally come on a disc or can be downloaded from the web) or Web 2.0 tools, which typically, are web-based and allow the user to use the programs online.

After you have found a resource for this week, post a message in which you describe the resource you selected and try to include all of the information you feel would be helpful to visitors to the EUODS website.

Presentation at the Texas Library Association Conference

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I made a presentation at the Texas Library Associating meeting on April 2 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston.

I created a set of web pages so the audience members could review my presentation materials later and you can find them online at:

http://faculty.coe.uh.edu/brobin/TLA/

The session was supposed to be a panel discussion with 2 other presenters in addition to me, but one of the folks was unable to participate and so the first presenter did her part on writing and then I followed with my presentation on digital storytelling. I would guess that there were somewhere between 100 and 200 people who attended the session, with most being librarians, although there were some teachers also, and many of the attendees were both teachers AND librarians.  I had about an hour for my presentation so I was able to show several digital story examples and I also demonstrated how to use Photo Story 3 to show how easy it is to begin creating your own digital stories.

After my presentation, there were several questions from the audience that surprised me because we don't necessarily cover these topics on our EUODS website, or if we do, perhaps we should make the information easier to find. Here are some of the topics that were brought up:

• I've heard that you can create titles in PowerPoint and bring them into Photo Story 3. Is this better to do than add title in PS3 and if so, how do you do this? (Easy to do and yes, it does give good results, but we don't show how to do this.)
  
  
• My students are already using Photo Story but they want to add animation. Can this be done? (The answer is yes, simple animation can be added to PS3 by adding sequential still images. I've showed this technique in some of my courses, but I don't think there's ever been any information on the website to show how it can be done.)
  
  
• When recording audio narration in Photo Story 3, can you keep recording over more than one slide? (Again, the answer is yes, you click on the next slide button on the screen and keep talking, but this is not obvious to many PS3 users and we don't address this on our site.
  
  
• How was the Pop-Up books video created? (I told the audience that it was created by using both PS3 and Windows Movie Maker. This led to the next question): How do you use both programs to create one project? (Again, this is something we cover in some of my courses, but is not on the website.)

So, the bottom line is that there is definitley some additional material that people are interested in that we don't currently address on the website, but I think we should.

Please post any ideas or suggestions you have about this.

Discussion Assignment Nine

For this week's assignment, you should try to find examples of Wikis, Social Bookmarks and Social Networks related to digital storytelling that you feel should be added to the EUODS website.
 
Post a message in which you describe the other Web 2.0 resources you found and indicate why you feel they should be added to our EUODS website.

Discussion Assignment Eight

For this week's assignment, you should try to find examples of blogs and/or podcasts related to digital storytelling that you feel should be added to the EUODS website.

Post a message in which you describe the blog and/or podcast resources you found and indicate why you feel they should be added to our EUODS website.
     
Important Notes:

1. Be sure to review the material on these topics on the current website so that you do not duplicate material that has already been included.
     
2. Please limit this week's research to Blogs and Podcasts. For next week, you will be asked to explore the use of other Web 2.0 resources (such as Wikis, Social Bookmarks, Social Networks), so if you find useful resources of this type, please wait until next week to discuss them.

    

Information about Midterm Project

During the Saturday face-to-face class meeting on March 14, we discussed the midterm project that deals with a collection of emails that I have received about digital storytelling and the EUODS website.

I have created a document that contains approximately 75 of these messages which we discussed in class and decided that each student in our course would work on either creating an entry for a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section that we will add to the site, or help develop an idea that was suggested in some of the emails. The list that we came up with and the students who have already selected a topic to work on is as follows:

DIGITAL STORYTELLING TOPIC	STUDENT
How can visitors to the EUODS website submit links to other DS resources?	Leon
What PowerPoint presentations are available for download the EUODS website and where are they located?	Kristi
What is the permission policy for using material found on the EUODS website?
Create a list of tutorials and how-to guides that are available on the EUODS website pus a list o other tutorials related to DS that are available online.	Christina
What equipment is recommended to begin creating digital stories?	Tatiana/Jen
Create a list of bibliographic information, including research results related to DS, available for visitors to our site interested in such information (such as students working on a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation on some aspect of DS).	Lynda
Create a section that includes information about DS workshops offered locally or in other places.	Margo
Create a listing of some of the more interesting "thank you messages" we have received about the EUODS website.	Lauren
How is DS being used in conjunction with e-Portfolios or e-Narratives?	Anh
What are some good sources for copyright-free and royalty-free music that can be used in digital stories?	Anita
Create a section that explains how digital stories from the EUODS website can be accessed through iTunes.	Shawn
Make some Photo Story files available for download. Select which ones and write up description for their use.	Yolanda
Prepare an outline for 90-second introductory audio or video clip where I will discuss what digital storytelling is, how it's being used in education and what visitors can find on our website.	Deidre
Do you have another idea?

Important Note 1: If your name is not on this list, please send me an email (brobin@uh.edu) letting me know which topic you would like to work on. The remaining topics will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis and the list will be updated as I receive your emails.
 
Important Note 2: Because the document with the 75 email messages contains names and contact information, I am not posting it on our course website or on the course blog; however, I will send an email message to each student in the course with a link to the document. If you do not receive this email message, please let me know so I can try sending it to you again.
 
Important Note 3: The midterm project may be created a Word document, PowerPoint slide presentation, PDF file, HTML file, etc. and
should be emailed to me (brobin@uh.edu) by midnight on April 5, 2009.

Discussion Assignment Seven

For this week's assignment, you should first read the posting about the MERLOT Faculty Development Editorial Board Award for Exemplary Online Learning Resources – MERLOT Classics 2009, which was given to our Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling website.
 
Then you should review this week's reading assignments, which include the MERLOT Website and the section on MERLOT's awards for Exemplary Learning Materials, including the previous winners.
 
After you have reviewed these materials, post a message in which you discuss your ideas about if and how this award should be noted on our EUODS website.
 
In addition, briefly discuss what information you feel should be included in the 30-minute presentation at the MERLOT International Conference so that others will know about the work we are doing to make our website a valuable resource for educators and students.
  

The AWARD WINNING Educational Uses of DS Website

While I was at the SITE Conference last week, I received the following message which I am delighted to share with you:

Congratulations!  Your learning material, “Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling,“ has been selected by the MERLOT Faculty Development Editorial Board as a winner of the MERLOT Award for Exemplary Online Learning Resources – MERLOT Classics 2009.

As part of the award, we are most pleased to invite you to attend the MERLOT International Conference in San Jose, California August 13-16, 2009.  The awards ceremony will be held during the Awards Luncheon on Friday, August 14th.  We will have an area reserved near the front of the room for you. During the awards ceremony, it will be our honor to present you with the award. You will also be able to showcase your award-winning contribution at the MERLOT International Conference during a 30-minute session.  

MERLOT - http://www.merlot.org
Visit MERLOT Voices - http://voices.merlot.org
MERLOT Conference Website - http://conference.merlot.org/2009/ 

My Response to Final Semester Project Ideas

Hello Everyone,

I'm now back at home after a successful trip to the SITE Conference in Charleston. I had hope that each of you would email me your ideas for the final semester project and I would reply with my comments so the blog would not get too busy. However, I have not received many emails so far, so I will instead try to respond on the blog over the next few days and we can also discuss project plans at our face-to-face session this coming Saturday, March 14. I hope to see you there.

Discussion Assignment Six-Final Project Plan

For this week's assignment, you should select a topic for the final semester project you will be creating and begin creating a draft version of the project. As mentioned above, you should select some aspect of digital storytelling and create content on that topic. The project can be new content or a modification of existing content, but either way, it should include material that can be added to the Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling website.

At this point in the semester, you should select the topic you will use and begin developing a draft version of the project. You may create the final project in any format you wish, such as Microsoft Word, PDF, PowerPoint, as an HTML page. You may also create a digital story on your topic or use a digital story (or stories) to supplement a written document. Additionally, you may use any other type of media or Web 2.0 tools of your choice as the whole or part of the final semester project.

In the Feb. 21st class, I demonstrated a resource page for a presentation I will be giving at the Texas Library Association meeting in April. You may want to refer to this page as one possible guide for how a final project that you develop might look. The page is at: http://faculty.coe.uh.edu/brobin/TLA/

Post a comment here in which you briefly describe the project you are planning to work on. You may also include questions you have about the content of project, the techniques you plan to use, or any other related issues.

Discussion Assignment Six-Optional Resources

Please post comments here on any examples of how Digital Storytelling is being used in educational ways that you have previously found but not yet posted. However, please do not include any Web 2.0 resources for this week, as we will explore those types of resource during Week Eight.
 

Remember that you will have two weeks to complete this week's assignments, as we will not have new material added until March 9, 2009, when I return from an out of town conference.

New Dates Selected for Remaining Face-to-Face Classes

Hello Everyone,

Based on the discussion at yesterday's Saturday session, the remaining face-to-face classes will be held as follows:

Saturday, March 14 
9:00am - 12:00 noon

Saturday, April 18
9:00am - 12:00 noon

Saturday, May 9
9:30am - 12:300 pm

Required Final Class Meeting (presentation of final semester projects)
9:30am to 12:30pm
Everyone will bring brunch food --signup sheet will be posted in advance

All three class sessions will be held in Room 328 in the CITE Lab at UH.

 

Possible Dates for Optional Saturday Classes in March and April

I am responding to Christina's comment that she will be taking the Comprehensive Exam this coming Saturday and will be unable to come to our face-to-face class meeting. 

Unfortunately, there is never any one day that fits everyone's schedule. So, I am offering to hold another optional Saturday session in March, if there is enough interest.

Here's how the March calendar looks at this point:

Saturday, March 7 - not available, Dr. Robin out of town
Saturday, March 14 - available 
Saturday, March 21 - not available, UH Spring Break

Saturday, March 28 - available, but Doctoral Comps are being held from 9:00am to noon

Please post a comment here to let me know if you would be interested in attending another F2F session in March, probably on the the 14th, but it could be on the 28th if there is no conflict with doctoral comps.

Also, as long as we're looking at the calendar, it might be helpful to also see which dates in April are possible should we want another optional session then. Here's the way the April calendar looks:

Saturday, April 4 - available

Saturday, April 11 - available

Saturday, April 18 - available

Saturday, April 25 - not available, Dr. Robin out of town

So, please also post a comment here to let me know you would be interested in attending another F2F session on any of the first three Saturdays in April.

Thanks for your help with this.

Discussion Assignment Five

For this week's assignment, you have several choices:

• Try to find digital storytelling tutorials, workshop materials, training activities or "how to" information created by others  especially those that will help people create their own digital stories--and could be added to our EUODS website;
  

• Review the tutorial information on the current and former EUODS websites and discuss how these materials could be improved and expanded. Please be specific in your critique and suggestions;
  

• Examples of actual digital stories created by others that we could feature on our EUODS website.

When you have found a suitable example of one of the items described above, post a comment to Discussion Assignment Five, in which you include the following information:

• A description of what you found

• The URL of the resource

• The name of the author/developer(s) and any information about them, if available

• A brief synopsis in your own words of what the material is about, especially any information related to the intended audience, why it was created, and how it might be used

• Any other information you think would be helpful to visitors to our website if this material were added

New Poll: May 9 F2F Meeting

Since there wasn't much discussion on the topic of when to meet for our final meeting on May 9, I have gone ahead and added it as a poll question. Right now it is at the bottom of the blog under the last displayed posting. Please vote for your preferred time; you can vote for more than one option. To whomever voted a minute ago while I was creating the blog, your vote was not counted as I had to delete and recreate the poll, so please vote again. The poll will close the morning of Friday, February 20.

--Deidre

Comments about Conducting Research on Digital Storytelling

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to add a few comments about the various websites, articles and other resources you have all been finding and discussing over the last few weeks. 

Point 1: I am truly astounded at how much material there is on the web about digital storytelling and how it's being used in so many different ways. When I first became interested in DS, there really wasn't that much material available and I think it's really remarkable to see how much and how fast this field is growing.

Point 2. I really love the descriptions that you are posting about the material you find. This will be really helpful when we're ready to add new content to the EUODS website, because it's much better to have an annotated link, than simply another web link, and because each of you brings a different set of experiences to your descriptions, which should make them relevant to many more visitors to the site.

Point 3: You've probably seen where I've mentioned that you should be thinking about ways to categorize the information that students are finding and we've had lots of good suggestions about that. But I think it's worth repeating again that when it comes time for you to choose a final semester project to develop for this course, many of you will probably choose topics that include a large amount of information, so please keep thinking about how you might organize the content you will be working with so that visitors to our site will be able to find what they're looking for.

Point 4: Most of you are doing a great job! Keep up the good work. A few students however seem to have gotten busy doing other things. If you're reading this and haven't been posting for a while, please relax, take a few deep breaths and think about posting even a few brief sentences to let the rest of us know that you're still with us. You may try posting a follow-up comment to what someone else has written or take a few minutes and post a quick reflection on your personal blog. I know that I get busy myself and don't get around to replyingt to everyone's postings as much as I would like, but you can be sure that I'm reading every post and I'll try to add more comments and I hope you will too.

Last Point (for now):  Remember that we will have our next optional face-to-face session from 9:00am to noon on Saturday, Feb. 21 in Room 328 of the CITE Lab at UH. We will conduct a hands-on session with Microsoft Photo Story 3 during the first half of the session, followed by questions & answers related to weekly assignments plus initial discussions of final semester projects--and of course, any other topics you would like to bring up. I hope to see you there. 

Online Discussion Assignment Four

For this week's assignment, you should try to find specific materials related to:

• Digital Storytelling Research Projects
   

• Conference Presentations on Uses of DS in Higher Education
   

• other materials related to uses of DS in Higher Education, including Citations to scholarly articles *
  
  * Note 1: Unlike last week, you may include links to articles that require authentication since these resources may be of interest to scholars, such as instructors and graduate students conducting research on various aspects of DS for a book, master's thesis or doctoral dissertation; and these visitors to our website may have access or might be willing to find ways to access these materials. We may also want to consider adding a new section under Links on the EUODS website that is something like "DS Research."

Try to find at least one good article or other web-based resource about this aspect of digital storytelling. Again like you have been doing for previous assignments, please discuss why you think the article or resource should be added to our site.

NOTE 2: For some students, the assignment for this week may be related to the articles you found last week, if one or more of them were related to research projects. If so, you may use the article again, but for this assignment, please include specific information about the research that was conducted such as a description of the purpose of the research, the research questions, the methods used, and what results, if any were published.

When you have selected an article or other resource you think should be added to our site, post a comment to Discussion Assignment Four, in which you include the following information:

• The name of the article - please include the title-several time over the last few weeks, this information has been left out

• The URL of the article/resource

• The name of the author(s) and any information about them, if available

• The date the article/resource was written or produced and any other publication information, if found

• A brief synopsis in your own words of what the material is about, especially any information related to the purpose of research conducted, including research questions, methodology and results

• Any other information you think would be helpful

Digital Storytelling Multimedia Archive

Please review the following website:

The Digital Storytelling Multimedia Archive

After you reviewed thew site, please post a comment in which you discuss your reaction to this multi-campus research project on digital storytelling in higher education. Please try to be specific in your comments and include what you like, don't like, works great, doesn't work, needs more work, etc., any comments related to the navigation of the site, plus any other questions or suggestions you have.

Your comments will be sent to the developer of the site who has asked for our feedback.

May 9 Face to Face Meeting

Hi everyone!

Dr. Robin asked me to start a discussion about the final Face to Face meeting scheduled for Saturday, May 9, during which we will do our final project presentations. There are several possibilities:

-- Do the 9am-12pm time that has been done for the other Face to Face meetings
-- Meet later, for example 11am-2pm, and have everyone bring something for a potluck lunch to enjoy while we present our projects
-- Have an afternoon meeting, like 1pm-4pm

Do people have preferences, or other ideas? Personally, I prefer the lunch option or the afternoon option, but am willing to do any of them. Let's have a discussion in the comments, and then once we've all had a chance to say something, maybe we can do a poll question for the vote? If everyone who wants to say something can do so this week, then we can vote next week and that will let everyone plan ahead to attend the meeting.

--Deidre

Adding Hypertext Links in Blog Postings

A question was posted on the discussion blog recently about how to make the web links "hot" when posting comments on the blog. It's not too difficult but you do need to use a little bit of HTML code to do this. Here is what the link will look like.

You can click on this link to go to THE EUDOS WEBSITE

Instructions for how to do this are on the Week Three web page at:

http://courses.coe.uh.edu/brobin/6397/week3/week3.htm#Links

Discussion Assignment Three

Try to find one or two good articles about digital storytelling. The article(s) you select may be on any topic related to to Digital Storytelling, but again like last week, please discuss why you think the article should be added to our site.

Important Note 1: An article about Digital Storytelling is not the same as a website that deals with the topic. Articles tend to focus on a particular aspect of Digital Storytelling and will have both a title and the name of the author or authors who wrote it. What you are looking for are resources that can b printed out and read by people interested in DS and could be given out as reading assignments in schools.

Articles that are found online will often be downloadable as Word documents or PDF files or they may be part of a web page, but will not usually be a series of web pages like most of the ones that were found and discussed during Discussion Assignment Two.

Important Note 2: Before you begin this assignment, you should examine the current Articles page under the Links menu on the current EUODS site and the Resources page on the previous DS site to make sure that the material you select has not already been listed.

When you have determined which articles you found that you think should be added to our site, post a comment in which you include the following information:

The name of the article
The URL of the article
The name of the author(s) and any information about them, if available
The date the article was written and any other publication information, if found
A brief synopsis in your own words of what the article is about
Any other information you think would be helpful in describing the article

Also please add any ideas you have about a category system that we might use to present these articles, similarly to what was requested last week for the websites that were found.

Poll Question Added to the Blog

Please note at the top right of the blog screen that a poll has been added to the blog as a way to focus on the outcomes of Discussion Assignment Two-A.

This first poll allows you to vote on how the other Digital Storytelling websites that have been found and discussed on the blog should be added to the EUODS website. Please participate in the poll by voting on the option that you agree with most. If your vote is for item 4: "I have another idea and will post a comment in which I discuss my thoughts on this", please post a follow-up comment in which you discuss your ideas.

You may also post a follow-up comment here even if you voted for one of the other items.

Our Next (Optional) Saturday Class Session: February 21, 2009

Our next (optional) Saturday class session will be held on February 21, from 9:00pm to 12:00 noon. The first hour will be a demonstration and hands-on session with Microsoft Photo Story 3 which will cover how to create a simple digital story. If you have not used Photo Story before or have used it but would like a review, I suggest that you try to attend this session. If you have used Photo Story before and feel you don't need a review, you are welcome to come to the second half of the class meeting which will begin at 10:15am. We will spend the rest of the morning discussing course topics, including weekly assignments and final semester projects, plus I will try to answer any questions or address other issues you may have.

Please let me know if you have any questions about the session.

New Look for the Course Blog

Hello Everyone,

There were some problems with the previous blog template we were using so I've now picked a new one that I think should work a little better.

Hope you like the new look!

Discussion Assignment Two - B

Please review the table on the Week Two web page that presents a synthesis of the Week One Discussion Assignment responses. Note that although it is still very early in the semester, several suggestions made by students could lead to part or all of the final semester project for the course. Please feel free to post a follow-up comment on the Course Discussion Blog in which you continue the discussion on any of these topics or post a comment on your personal blog in which you discuss how any of these topics (or other related ones) might be of interest to you as part or all of the final semester project you will be proposing later in the semester.

Discussion Assignment Two - A

This week's primary assignment is to conduct some research online to find other DS websites that should be featured on our site. Currently, when you go to the Links menu and select Other DS Sites (http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/other_ds_sites.html), you will see that there are 16 other websites listed with a sentence or two description.

For this week, try to find at least three different really good DS websites that are not already listed on our site. Then write a brief one to two sentence description of each site.

You should also consider how more websites might listed on our site so that we don't just have another long list of web links; and perhaps include suggestions for some type of categorization system that could be added to this page of the EUODS website.

And although this may be a little difficult, try to check out the postings of other students for this assignment before you post your own, so that we don't end up with the same websites being described by multiple people.

When you have determined which websites you found that you think should be added to our site, post a comment in which you discuss the websites you found, why you think they should be added to our site, and include the brief description you wrote for each site. In addition, please add any ideas you have about a category system that we might use to present these sites.

Discussion Assignment One

Review the two Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling websites (the previous version and the current version), including at least some of the digital story examples and then post a comment in which you begin discussing your initial assessment of the current website, In your posting, you may want to include:

- your overall impression of the site; 
- what, if anything, should be changed, added or deleted that will make the site more useful as an educational resource;
- are there any materials on the site that don't look correct when using a particular web browser or an operating system other than Windows XP?
- what useful material, if any, is included on the earlier version of the site that is not found on the current site; and
- any other information you think should be discussed.

Then, remember to post at least 2 follow-up comments to some of the other postings on this topic.

Please Post the Link to Your Personal Blog Here

When you have created your personal blog, please post a comment here in which you include the URL so the rest of the members of the class will be able to access it.

Welcome to the Course Discussion Blog

Welcome to the course discussion blog for the graduated course, CUIN 6397/8397: Creating Educational Materials for Digital Storytelling. We will use this blog for online discussions during the spring 2009 semester at the University of Houston.

Please begin the discussion by posting a comment in which you briefly introduce yourself.