Digital Story Telling

Adobe Spark for Digital Story Telling

          Hi, guys! To be honest, I am very happy since this post will be my last post on this first half of the semester. On this last post, I would like to share about Adobe Spark which is usually used for making a digital story telling.

          Before go straight to Adobe Spark, do you know what digital story telling is? So, digital story telling is a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to share aspects of their story. The media used may include the digital equivalent of film techniques (full-motion video with sound), stills, audio only, or any of the other forms of non-physical media (material that exists only as electronic files as opposed to actual paintings or photographs on paper, sounds stored on tape or disc, movies stored on film) which individuals can use to tell a story or present an idea.

          Then, what is Adobe Spark? Adobe Spark is an integrated suite of storytelling applications for the iPad, iPhone, and web developed by Adobe Systems. It comprises three separate design apps: Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video. Its apps became the company's first to be named by Apple as an App Store Best App of the Year and have been downloaded over 3.5 million times.

          Maybe some of you wonder how to make an account on Adobe Spark, so that finally, you can make your own digital story telling. Here are the steps to make an account on Adobe Spark:

1.   Open your internet application (Mozilla, Chrome, Flock, etc.).

2.  Open www.google.com.

3.  Or simply open https://spark.adobe.com/

4.  Choose “login”.

5.  Choose “continue using google”.

6.  Choose 1 google account you will use for your Adobe Spark account.

7.  Enter your password.

8.  Input your day, month, and year of birth.

9.  Tick “I have read and agreed with the term …”

10. Choose “OK”.

11.  Choose “video”.

12. Type your title for the video.

13. Choose one purpose of making the video (promoting an idea, tell what happened, etc).

14. Or simply choose “start from scratch”.

15. Choose to play the tutorial video.

16. Create your own video.

17. After you have done making, preview or even share it.

For the benefit I found when making my digital story telling using Adobe Sparks is that the tutorial video is very easy to understand. The tools are so many. You can include your own photos, videos, icons, and you also can choose your own music track as the back sound. Since the tutorial video can be easily understood, all people can make their own without any guidance.

For the weakness from using Adobe Spark is that Adobe Spark is a quite big application. Sometimes, it works slowly and we “must” be patient when it is happening. The next weakness is each slide can just load 30 seconds length of a video. So, if you have a video with 2 minutes length, you need 4 slides for loading all of them. The last weakness I found is that each slide can also just records 30 seconds audio (our own narrative). Thus, you have to be a bit “smart” in putting which recorder on which slide.

To be honest, I am not really sure I will use this application for teaching my future students. If you ask “why”, the answer is because this application cannot be used in all grades. In my opinion, this application can just be applied to minimally junior high school students. Last thing to say is that it depends on what grade of students I will teach later.

Okay, I think that’s all about Adobe Spark. Here, I have made 1 story of my own. Try to listen to it!

*. Using earphone will be better.

If you have any suggestion and/or comment, just leave your suggestion and/or comment on the box provided below.

Thank you, and see you on the second half of the semester. God bless you abundantly!