PART B - Storyboard and Script

Angelica and I have made some serious progress in our Group Leadership Project, with collaborating on a storyboard and script for the video we will be creating. When we first talked about the topic we would be covering, Google Apps Scripts, I knew very little about it and felt unfamiliar with the platform. Throughout research and help from Angelica, I finally came to appreciate our tool. I needed to know what I was facing and how I could suggest and teach it to those I support at my school. In addition to our research, brainstorming what our video would look like in the storyboard and scripting stages helped to further understand not only what we were showcasing, but also how to present it from the learner point of view. This was very valuable because as we were learning, we took into account what worked and how we could improve it when presenting it.

We began the scripting portion on Google Docs, with a shared document that Angelica and I collaborated on to get the ball rolling. In it we sectioned off what areas we would each cover, she would take care of application of the tool, where as I would write the theory and ideas behind the tool. She was practical, I was theoretical, a neat combination. I wrote on what technologies power the tool, and explained them, as well as made an effort to set familiar comparisons for learners. Angelica and I began to go back and forth near the end of our scripting when we got to the practice portion of the lesson. At this point, you can say, we shared the stage in presenting in tandem during the overview of how to get scripting started for first time users.

Once we had a base for our script, we began to story board using a Google Site that Angelica created, which by the way looked great in both aesthetics and function! We had six main storyboard sections. Each covering a different aspect of the video that one of us would cover with our script, slides, and sound effects. It is on this site that we conveyed our intentions for the look and feel of the video, in a static representation of course. The sections were divided like so: Angelica and I both open up the presentation, I take sections two and three, she takes four and five, and we join back up on the sixth section to deliver an example.

Creating a storyboard on Google Sites is a great and creative idea, I owe Angelica all the credit for thinking about that. It not only offers us an easy and familiar platform to collaborate on, but it is also a very flexible vessel to convey our information and ideas through. It could also be used as together with, or as an alternative to the video.

The visual and sound ques are listed and described above each graphic, which represents a slide or section of the video. Where there are transitions, sound effects, and speaking or animations, there are text ques for us to remember what goes where.

Here is a link to our Google Site storyboard:


https://sites.google.com/site/groupleadershipproject2011/home

PART A - Brainstorm Session

Untitled from Alex Gonzalez on Vimeo.


The video clip above is a recording of my group's web-conferencing brainstorming session. As mentioned in my previous blog post, it was a neat experience and the platform we used is something I will keep in mind when thinking of suggestions for educators I support.

We went with Vyew as the platform and had our ups and downs during the conference. The advantages of this platform were plenty. It is a free service, it offers a fairly straightforward interface, and allowed us to use audio and video to communicate, as well as some basic collaboration features including the shared canvas. I would say that these are essential to achieving progress in a web-conference when collaborating on a project. The neat thing about this service is that it is all in one. While we could have used Skype, we wouldn't necessarily be sharing a screen, unless we were sharing a Google Doc at the time of the session.

One of the disadvantages was, perhaps just for us, the inability to find how to record our session to be able to share it. Since we were not able to find how to record it, we used ScreenFlow to capture and edit our session, and then published it to the web with Vimeo. Since our session exceeded the YouTube time limitations, Vimeo allowed us to upload a longer clip. We adjusted to the situation and were still able to capture our session, but it would be nice to figure it out, perhaps next time we use Vyew we will come across that feature.