Digital Writing Project: Lake Superior's North Shore

The final project... The unveiling...

Drum roll...

I hope you'll enjoy reading, listening, and watching! Let me know what you think.

At the end of the tunnel...?

Well, at the end of the tunnel there is the proverbial light and I detect a faint glimmer right now. That’s what happens when you try to do waaaaaaay too much! On the positive side, my Voicethread is done, my Smilebox is done, and the PhotoStory project I somehow got talked into doing is also done! Now “all” I have to do is put it together in a Glogster poster that is half started, and cross my fingers hoping all these formats can be uploaded without issues onto the web.

As I was working on all these separate pieces, I kept thinking that I should change my project and do something strictly educational. Should I do a piece about amazing Lake Superior facts? Should I do a PhotoStory about the devastating ice storm of March 2009? How about a “fabulous places to visit on the North Shore” Glogster complete with Google Earth map (don’t laugh: I started the map…)? Yikes! WILL SOMEONE PLEASE KNOCK SOME SENSE INTO ME?

I have enough pieces already. I’m done.

Really.

So what was it like working on all these writing pieces? Well, Glogster has been somewhat challenging; mostly because I tend to be wordy (you didn’t know, did you?) and “posterizing” yourself as Glogster says means using few words. I’m hoping (worried?) that I’ll be able to link Glogster to everything else I have created. With so many formats, that’s the unknown.

PhotoStory was plain FUN! I picked a few pictures from last year’s North Shore vacation and asked my 7 year-old to tell me about his favorite things to do Up North. He talked about the pictures, told me in what order to put them. He decided what he was going to say and I asked a few questions to get more details. We did one recording, ad lib. He did great! A natural storyteller… Then he wanted to add more and more to the Photostory: what about climbing the rocks at Gooseberry Falls and the time his shoes got all wet? What about when Dad taught him how to skip rocks last year? What about…? What about…?

So I asked him to pick his top 5 things to do Up North. We found some videos but couldn’t upload them to Photostory. So with a few additional pictures we settled on the Photostory you’ll see. We recorded narration for the new pictures (twice, since the first time I forgot to replug the microphone…). He helped me choose the music. I said no to the Midnight Sonata: too dramatic. We talked about the mood of the story, the pace of his voice, how music changes everything. It was great! And when it was all saved and done, I realized we didn’t have an end slide or credits. A couple of PowerPoint slides later, bingo! Start to finish: 90 minutes. Fabulous!

I know I will cherish that PhotoStory of Christopher’s North Shore Memories forever: it’s a slice of his life, a glimpse onto his 7 year-old self and what was most important to him. Nothing compares to hearing the voice of the writer, especially when that writer is your baby and is growing up way too fast. Christopher is so excited by the final product that he can’t wait to tell more stories about the time we went to Disney World, the butterflies we raise every summer, on and on and on…

His excited smile is the real light at the end of the tunnel: it makes it all worth it!