Category: digitalstorytelling
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Interactive Fiction Database and CYOA Video Stories
I grew up in the 1980s and loved reading “Choose Your Own Adventure” (CYOA) stories. From time to time, as an advocate of “Playing with Media” and “Show What You Know with Media” pedagogy and learning, I’ve created my own CYOA stories and helped others create them too. Today I learned about the “Interactive Fiction…
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Burning DVDs in 2025
This evening I successfully burned two DVDs for the 40th Anniversary of the Mint Hill Historical Society, which is coming up on Saturday. For several years now I’ve been volunteering with the MHHS, helping with oral history interviews and their website. For Saturday’s event, they want to play a silent slideshow of 1087 photos on…
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Creating YouTube Shorts with Descript.com
I recently created and published a series of shorts for YouTube (videos less than 60 seconds long, all formatted with a portrait (9 x 16) rather than landscape aspect ratio from the 8 minute video of my speech at the No Kings rally, in Charlotte, North Carolina, on June 14, 2025. In this post, I…
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Preserving the Past Through Technology
At the March 2025 NCMLE Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, the American Book Company‘s podcasting team interviewed me and published an 8 minute audio recording of our conversation. Check it out! “Preserving the Past Through Technology” My middle school family oral history unit is available on my curriculum sharing website. Learn more about Bob Sprankle…
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Better Video Audio with Auphonic
This afternoon and evening I created a new 12 minute video for my “Cook with Wes” video series on YouTube, “Spring Cleaning My RecTeq RT-700 Bull Smoker: Tips & Tricks!” I recorded the audio on my iPhone 13 using a cheap tripod from Amazon and iPhone tripod mount. I edited the video clips together using…
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Media Kit Lesson
Today in my middle school web design class, we wrapped up a multi-week unit and project I call our “Image and Video Media Kit.” In this post I’ll summarize the unit and share the techniques I used for student presentations this semester, which went smoothly. You can access this full lesson (including sample media kits…
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Dynamic Audio Waveform Videos
Have you seen audio podcast “highlight videos” as reels on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, or other social media websites which include an audio waveform animation that is synchronized to the podcast? Today I explored a few tools, with help from ChatGPT recommendations, to create my own “dynamic audio waveform video.” Here is the 12 minute video…
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AI Created Video Clips
One of the powerful ways artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms can be used by media creators is to identify short clips in longer videos which are potentially engaging for audience members, and then facilitating the process of making those clips into shorter videos that can be shared on social media. In this post I’ll highlight how…
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Priceless Media Hostages
This evening I looked through an old box of media tapes and CDs which managed to survive our 1000+ mile move from Oklahoma to North Carolina two years ago. There are some priceless artifacts here. Basically all the Digital 8 and MiniDV video tapes which I recorded of our kids and family growing up are…
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Oral History Workshops (July 2024)
I’m sharing a 2 part, free oral history workshop series for the Mint Hill Historical Society this coming Saturday, July 13 and the next Saturday, July 20. These will each be an hour and a half long, from 9 to 10:30am, and held in “The Barn” at the Historical Society: 4311 HILLSIDE DRIVE, MINT HILL, NC. An…