The Digital Portrait

The digital Portrait is a project that is front loaded as far as credit. This means you might not get all the way through but that does not penalize you. So you get most of the credit for completing the Sketch. If you do get completely, or even mostly, done you will get bonus credit at the end of the class. The intention is to reward trying to extend your reach and to succeed.

Wouldn't it be interesting if five, ten or even 50 years from now you could look back at your current dreams. The intent of the Portrait is to build a digital image of you talking about what you believe about yourself and how you want to progress toward the future. That is an awesome task and not an easy one....but I want you to give it a try.

Step 1: Read the following document which gives you background ideas about yourself.
The condensed information on the above link will help you understand terms like: 
  • Meaningfulness
  • Outcomes
  • Activities
  • Tools
  • Values
  • Beliefs
  • Interests
  • Barriers
  • Transferable Skills
Step 2: We need to create a sketch.

The Digital Sketch is really the script where you gather your ideas together and create a narrative.
This narrative is what we will record. The document itself you will turn in and I will give you credit for the project based on the sketch.

What you first need to determine is how you want to make your digital sketch. It could take many formats. The document on the brainstorm button above sort of explores the range of possibilities. If you have other ideas talk to me so we can make this work.
At this point I will assume you decided to make a video. Here is an example of the sketch format.
And an example of the sketch I wrote for myself.
Time to record.  Your sketch is your script. Practice reading it. When you are ready, record it. You can speak into a cell phone or you can borrow a flip camera or a digital recorder. Last semester i-phone audio worked extremely well. Just record it and email it to your self.

Once you have audio, time to start the video. Our best software is Adobe Premiere Pro. If you have something at home feel free to use that. What I did is on my home page at the bottom of the center column. 

Normally we don't like video of us talking. So most people knock out the video and just use the recorded sound Then illustrate the things you are talking about by dragging slides into the video track.

I collected current photos, found some on the internet that represented things I had had in the narrative and brought in some personal. Put all of this into a folder and you are ready to edit.

Another way is to drag photos that apply to you into I-movie which is very good with photos. You build a slide show. Then we stretch the slide show to fit your audio.

Final step is to lay some music under it if you would like. Then you can export it, you can upload to the web or you could even put it on your website (upload to youtube and create a link).