Deck the halls - Creating a multi-media poster.

Merry Christmas one and all, and although the last month has flown by, some of us are back in the swing of things and studying hard (after all there is an assignment deadline waiting in the wings). 

December has been about creating a multimedia poster in H818, in order to 'advertise' our presentation at the online conference which will be happening in February. So we have all been experimenting with different media and trying to figure out which one to use. (My next post will include my beta version!).

Challenge 1: what is a poster?
This was the first hurdle for many of us, as when you think 'poster', the concept of a physical, graphical presentation spring to mind (like the ones that you stuck all over your wall as teenager, only more educational). any of the tools tried out helped to present this more one dimensional approach. However, the guidance we were given was that it had to be 'multi-media. which means it needs to be raised from one dimensional, to at least two!

Challenge 2: Multimedia tools
Thus began the trek into the forbidden kingdom and an exploration of the tools and variety of format that one could choose to make a poster out of. For many of the tools, the companies like to suck you in with freebies, but if you want to make them available to others then you need pay up. The other thing is that you can spend 'HOURS' online creating new things, so you have to start getting selective.

One of the first things I tried was Toon doo, which wasn't really a multi-media tool, but I loved the cartoon strip that you could create. Hours of fun! You can even produce your own comic, and the graphics looks great.

By samsantics | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

I will be using this tool again in the future, and possibly using some of it for my final artifact. 

My poster

Following on from this I found Glogster. This is an amazing (american) site, where the tools can be used by students to create their own educational posters. There are hundreds of them to look at. I do wonder if anyone really using them as content or whether the emphasis is on the creation. This is a great way to get kids to be creative, and I wish I had this when I was doing my homework 30 years ago!  Anyway, this was a tool that had a great poster layout allowing for embedding video and audio content. I created a really rough draft to decide whether this would be the approach that I might use. The great thing about Glogster is that it also works on mobile devices. I ended up signing up to the service, as I will be using this tool in the future as a great way to get information together in one place.

So far this was the contender for the poster......

...then I came back to animation. I don't know why, by I like animation and so it was great to explore some different formats.

Firstly there was Moovly. I like the tool because it was a bit like the video and audio editors you get, although the characters and pictures were a little limited (I expect like most tools, you get more if you pay). This was very addictive! It allowed you to create a more classic version of the animated films you see a lot nowadays. I really liked it and could see some potential for creating both the poster and the artifact.

 

Then there was animoto. I am afraid this was the approach that I fell in love with! I have used some similar slideshow animations before, and I like the combination of text, images and music. I can't tell you why, but I think it's to do with the richness and also the emotive nature of the medium. 



So I asked what people preferred... I was still potentially leaning towards the moovly animation, but after talking to volunteers, a number of them preferred the immediacy of the animoto animation. Animoto however is REALLY expensive if you want to remove the watermark and get the video. And it's a great tool so I can see why it would be.

Challenge 3: Accessibility
As several people pointed out, the challenge with a full on multimedia approach is that it is not very accessible for those with impaired sight. We also talked about how some people like this multimedia approach and other's didn't. So my challenge was to consider whether to use the tool that I really wanted, and create accessible alternatives, or whether to use a different tool. 

Because I had created my storyboard using a slide show, I decided to explore other tools that I could use. Also, by using a slideshow, I could potentially create an accessible alternative that people could click through themselves and a transcript. I like this idea, as I have never tried writing audio descripton's before, so it seemed a good time to try!

Final tool - Wondershare slideshow creator
Not a free tool, but as it's Christmas I decided to treat myself.
The first version for review is below, but jump to the next blog post to see the second version which expands on this.