Multimedia Story Draft:
For my multimedia story, I have decided to write about one of the hikes I will be doing in the next few weeks. I will be hiking Mount Benson in Nanaimo B.C., it is roughly a 4 hour hike with a view at the top. For this hike I will need to pack; hiking shoes, appropriate clothing, snacks, water, bear spray, and my hiking backpack to carry all of my items. I have done this hike before but not for a really long time so I will be going with some friends who have recently done it and know the route quite well.
For the shape of the story, I am planning on creating a children’s style picture/story book. I selected this style as I think it really fits the “7 storytelling techniques used by the most inspiring TED presenters” (Chibana 2015). These techniques include immersing your audience in the story, sharing a personal story, building suspense, bringing your characters to life, not just telling but showing your audience, building up to a S.T.A.R. moment, and ending some type of positive takeaway”. I think that children’s books often do a great job of immersing the audience through colorful pictures and illustrations and sharing personal stories in ways that are easy for their age demographic to understand. They usually always have some type of conflict to hook the children so they are curious to know what happens next and lead to a resolution that usually highlights hidden takeaways around important messages. For example kindness, friendships, or taking care of ourselves/others.
I plan to create images through watercolour to add colourful visuals, text/words on the pages, and as well an audio recording of the story to make it more accessible by incorporating different forms of media. Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia Learning will be incorporated into my story because the principles explain how our brains do not interpret things separately but instead all together. My story will include audio, visuals, and text, that will flow together hopefully without causing “extraneous cognitive load”. I can prevent this by thoroughly planning my images and what text will be put onto the pages to provide a well narrated story without it becoming repetitive or overwhelming on the page. The site also discusses the importance of the “voice principle”, which shares the importance of having a real person narrating a story and not an automatic robot/machine. This plays into my plan to record an audio version where I can express emotions in my voice rather than reading in a monotone way.
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