Reflections on my Digital Story

I wanted to thank all my kind blog readers for their comments regarding my digital story on Harriet Tubman. It was a fun project, which was quite a bit more involved than I would have anticipated.  All things considered, I think it went well, and I look forward to creating more such stories when I finish my teaching certificate (and master's degree) a year from now.  The following is my personal reflection, which I entered in our assessments page, in a somewhat abridged state.

Reflecting upon my digital story, I have come to one certain conclusion:  I have an even greater respect for the work of Ken Burns than I had previously!  In only a scant 4-5 minute session, I had to think of proper use of images, including an order that would move the story forward; the pacing of my narration and what I would say that would illuminate the image on the screen while still pertaining to the overall story; the inclusion of music, which in my case took me over a week to locate; and the overall mood of the piece, which is as important to the narrative as the information being presented.

The value of correct image acquisition can’t be overstated.  I spent considerable time culling through

innumerable images to come up with the few that I selected for my project.  It seems that Harriet Tubman is a more popular historical person than I had realized, and the amount of ink and image dedicated to her memory is immense.  I imagine there are subjects that lend themselves to greater economy due to the dearth of available data, but in a case like this, the author must be prepared to devote time and effort into the selection process.

Further,  the actual placement of images in an order that moves the story forward was critical to the cohesiveness of this piece, as Ms. Tubman lived a very interesting life that intersected the lives of many other important historical figures.  Clearly there was not enough time to address all of these possible avenues, so I had to whittle down my narrative and image selection to show a thumbnail sketch of Ms. Tubman’s life, hopefully leaving students with a desire to know more.  

Also, the importance of good narration should be apparent to all.  I must have redone my narration 50 times in order to get my cadence to an acceptable level.

I personally felt my narration was a bit dry and boring, but the class seemed to enjoy it, so I’ll take their word over mine!

Finally, the music selection was one I thought of paramount importance to the mood and flavor of my  piece.  There are countless spirituals and hymns I could have selected, many of which have been recorded over and over during the course of time, but this particular song really hit the mark in my opinion.  I spent over a week reviewing mp3 files I had found online in order to come up with this, and it was the one piece I of which I was most proud.