Story telling using Make Beliefs Comix

The October digital story telling challenge was started by RestructureGirl in her blog post. For Week 4 of I have done a comic using MakeBeliefsComix.com

The key to story telling is to simply your message and get the story told in a few images. Comics are good for that in that you can pick characters, change their mood and gestures and add text as words or thought bubbles.

I can see many applications in a library setting, even in academic libraries. The story is told in my comic is aimed at postgraduate students promoting our library's open access repository and the comic is called How does you research find an audience ?

The direct link to it is:
http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/?comix_id=20368245C324795

You can't save this work on their website, but have to print a copy, do a screen capture or email the link. It's dead easy to do one.

Joan Sutherland tribute using Google Search Stories

For a wrap up of Week 2 in the October Show and Tell, digital story telling challenge go to Restructuregirl's latest blog post.

The digital story telling challenge was organised by Restructuregirl I'm having some fun with it!

It's now up to Week 3. This week I had a go at Google Search Stories Video Creator, which is available on a YouTube channel. The final video story gets uploaded to YouTube.

It's straightforward once you nut out a story sequence. Essentially you tell a story using a combination of Google searches. Start by getting the script down and then decide if you want the search to be of: text, images, maps, blogs, books etc. Then choose the music. The choice of music is pretty ordinary, but I settled on some cello music they list under "Drama". Of course the whole deal results in shameless advertising for Google, but you can have some fun with it!

I can see an educational use for this and I'm sure you could turn it into something related to learning and information skills.

So this is my little tribute to "our Joanie", world famous Australian soprano, Joan Sutherland who died this week, 12 October 2010. If this video is not the best quality when embedded in the blog, try going to YouTube direct for my Tribute to Joan Sutherland.

Open Access Week Video from McGill University Library

Open Access Week 2010

Visit Open Access Week

Open Access Week is on next week: October 18-24 2010. It's a global event, now in its 4th year and it is promoting open access as a new norm in scholarship and research.

The themes are: Learn Share Advance

There are many activities happening in Europe and North America, all listed at http://openaccessweek.org and follow the Twitter tag #oaw2010.

There's even some OAW haiku my favourite is:

It's the online age
You're losing research impact...
Make it free online

From what I can see the awareness in Australia seems to be pretty negligible. But well done to Deakin University for an interesting program of seminars.

Week 2 October show and tell

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

I decided to stick with Animoto to make a promotional video for Open Access Week, which is coming up 18-24th October 2010.

What have a I learned? Well, this time I spent more time on arranging the images and text in some coherent sequence. The images I've used should be a bit larger to get a better resolution. Selecting images and music takes an inordinate amount of time, I find. And, don't copy the embed code into Notepad, but take it straight from the Animoto website.

I think the text function that Animoto includes could make this a useful tool for library promotional type videos.

Week one of October show and tell

RestructureGirl has a wrap up of week one with links to all the learning activities. Animoto has been a hit, but there are many more approached to vblogging to try out.

http://restructuregirl.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/octshowntell/

October Show and Tell challenge

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

There's a challenge on again from a group of librarians on Twitter. The October challenge is to explore digital story telling and video blogging — for more info in Restructuregirl’s blog post.

Here's my entry for week one. I decided to do Animoto as we had a presentation on that at our staff Library 2.0 day in July and it looked interesting. Then I saw an Animoto video done by BonitoClub which was a picture tour through Japan using some Flickr photos and Animoto.

So this is my first attempt using some of my bird photos taken in Australia and Bali. You need between 12 and 16 photos for this short video and you can pick the music from Animoto's selection.

Animoto allows you to make a short 30 second video with their free Animoto account. Anything more costs you only $30+ something a year. You can embed the code in your blog, as done here, or share it on Twitter, Facebook, etc. I haven't done any editing to this, but will play around more with Animoto maybe for next week's challenge.

It's on again - Perth Library Camp (AKA Perth Unconference)

Once again there is going to be a library Unconference (Library Camp) in Perth. It will be held at the Grove Library on October 25th 2010 from 9.30 to 4.30.

The registration for library Unconference 2010 is now open.

To register just go to http://www.librarycampperth.com and add your name to the list.

Please be quick these things usually fill up fast.

If you have something you'd like to see a session on, even if you don't want to do the session yourself, please add it to the sessions ideas page.

The Twitter hashtag for the day is: #lcp2010