BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front): From this course, I gained a tremendous amount of capabilities to tell stories in the digital world but also left a lot on the table.
When I first started the semester, there was a wide, open space in my mind, not knowing what I’d be experiencing but I knew I had a lot to learn. Then there was the immediate firehose effect of figuring out all the space I needed to work within, and it was frustrating and time consuming. As it turned out, each assignment was not the dragon I had expected and there were ways to accomplish each task even if it was just basic or average achievement compared to others. For me, it was a struggle, so nothing was basic nor average.
At the end each week, when I was voting for the post of the week, I really learned a lot from the write-ups of classmates who included details of how they produced their work and the software they used. That was helpful and also frustrating because I learned about their processes, tools and tricks that I could use in the future but also wished I had learned about earlier so I could have used it in that week’s assignments .
Looking over the semester’s work, I’m pleased with everything I created I also realize gaps that need to be filled in, like creating text over photos and working with GIFs. There were also some DailyCreates that left me stumped but I did not have the time nor energy to figure out how to create them.
I’m most proud of the short movie I made, Come Josephine In My Flying Machine . It brought all my learned skills together, with voice-over narration that I wrote and edited, separating audio and video from clips then matching video tracks with new audio tracks. Also, audio and video clipping and editing, fading volume in the beginning and end, and adding titles and credits, all of this in both Audacity and Open Shot with assists in Vimeo, freesound, RecorderPro, PowerPoint and CloudConvert. All of this included overall design of the work, then design within the work to maintain flow.
This course has given me the necessary skills that I sought to take me into the future. Now, I’ll create a really cool website with a great background, interesting layout, and content that expresses my unique voice and story!
Everybody starts from a different place. In getting through everything, you may have accomplished more than most, because everything was new. Maybe there are gaps, but you should know that you can figure out how to fill them in, because you’ve figured out so much already.