The past two weeks I’ve been trying to decide what tools to use for my digital storytelling assignment.  I’ve had experience with Animoto and Xtranormal; both are really fun.  I was intrigued about the possibilitities of Popcorn Maker, which gave me an idea of a task.

I looked through the videos on my cell phone–I have quite a few of my adorable dog, Genji. (He is quite the animated talker.) I discovered that I needed to upload the video to a web-based host, so I created a Vimeo account. Uploading a 13-second video through Explorer took more than a day–a very frustrating task. When I checked the next day, the video was still processing, so I deleted it and tried again using Safari, and within the hour, I had and email stating the video was ready.

The next step was uploading the Vimeo into Popcorn Maker–a snap.  I also found it rather easy to add the speech bubbles as pop ups.  I invite you to take a look at my story (I couldn’t embed because I haven’t created a YouTube account.)  The sound quality is bad–probably because I used my phone to record.  However, I’m pleased with the bubbles; Genji said that I translated his barks correctly.

I’m interested in how digital storytelling tools can be used to go beyond narrative.  It might be interesting to explore ways to use Popcorn Maker as an analysis tool.  For example, students could perhaps upload a speech and use the pop-ups to analyze the rhetorical strategies.  Or perhaps they could upload a music video or movie clip and add historical context details.  Please leave a comment with your ideas!