WritingAssignments

 Fairytale Writing – DS106 All the Way – AKA “We can’t all be @JimGroom” Thanks to all who share and contribute for making my DS106 world real. I hope you enjoy the Fairy Tale of the journey so far. I created this while hanging out in my bungalow in the Village for the Bovine FairyTale Festival (hoping it counts for credits in both!)

Well – the week to stretch some skills has come a little heavier than others. Writing. Writing a fairy tale. I am much more verbose online than in person – but it usually is in trying to have an asynchronous discussion or going through steps in training – not stories and not fiction.

I have enjoyed the reading of the resources so abundantly provided by NanaLou. But I tend to enjoy the moment of the story and not diving in and trying to pull  it apart and figure out the meanings and inferences. Hans Christian Anderson – well, I have always loved Danny Kaye and I remember the movie as a kid – but the dark and sad stories do become a little depressing when you don’t have the slapstick and singing to go along with them.

Rocky and Bullwinkle were a childhood favorite – so Fractured FairyTales high on my list. My Dad also had a teasing and dry sense of humor – so it was something we shared and I would listen to his stories. I was a fine arts specialist at the elementary level when is was in the classroom as one of my early career assignments. I would collaborate with classroom generalists as they would teach the writing and I would connect the fine arts in lessons. Students were guided in steps to story writing by taking things they knew or happened in their own lives and changing them up to fit a story. A theme along with a book was often retelling The Three Little Pigs from the wolf’s point of view. So I decided to use things that have happened in the last 6 months and follow the pattern of a fairy tale – so my version of a fractured tale – combining different things that may or may not be considered as being connected.

I was surprised the drafts came quickly. After reviewing – I think the Elves and the Shoemaker may be the format behind the DS106 and the Ed Administrator.

After recent weeks with design, visuals, audio, video – it seemed sort of plain and not too exciting to just have black and white words on a page.

I decided it was time to push my audio -not the editing part – but the part about not using my voice for recording. I have a few different mics – but haven’t been happy with the sound. Plus, I have to find a way that I don’t think anyone is listening when I am doing it – sort of like dancing – I can have lots of fun if I don’t think anyone is looking.

I used iRecorder – an app on my iPad – went down in the basement to my laundry room and closed the door. With the script on my ironing board – so I was standing – I hit record and read. The app then connects over wifi to my computer and transfers the file – pretty slick!

In Audacity I just cleaned up some gaps and breaths – not too much editing or effects. I found some piano music on Jamendo to add to the background and left it at that. No sound effects at this time.

In March of 2015 – Rochelle Lockridge had assembled the work of a radio collaboration on the NOIR theme. She presented it in a FlipBook. I was fascinated by the Flipbook format and have decided it will be a good way to assemble my family stories in a better way by allowing different media and narratives to be included – better than endless slideshows with music or audio. The format will give the chance to weave the stories together as our life actually unfolds. I opted for the buy – Rochelle’s reasoning of pros and cons made sense for what I needed. In order to start making use of my investment I thought the fairytale might be a good learning project.

A PDF is created first (at top of the post) – so that happened. I thought I was going to tackle inDesign – but after an hour gave that up! I will come back to that on another project. I opened iBooks and created there first and exported as the PDF.  This also had me look at font, layout and some graphics – so stayed in line with design week – even though that is in the Village.

This is okay – but the audio and GIF and some other things don’t come through. It is a way to distribute the writing.

I imported into FlipPDF Pro and began exploring. I found how to add the audio and video, get the GIF to be running. Then came exporting. I don’t want the $9.99/month subscription for hosting. @RockyLou22 embeds her flipbooks in her websites and had a way to share it with others. I spent about an hour with the directions – they don’t offer much because they really want you to upload to their pay site. After little success – I put it aside. I will go back and solve it, but wanted to get this post done while it was still a fresh memory. I will connect with @RockyLou22 for some hints when things slow down a little.

For Apple devices – it is in iBook form – even this is not smooth  or clean. It comes in Google and you have to ignore the screen and download – and then open in ibooks

 

I need to get the FlipBook version working…..maybe as the night goes on it will come. 🙂