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.