I wanted to start off this blog with an image of what I am dreaming of...warmth, sunshine, and sunflowers. Instead, it is currently rainy, slushy, dark, and gray out. It's quite depressing.
I am escaping the ominous weather here at the Daily Freeman. Today I played around with Storify for a little bit. Storify is a tool that allows you to gather pictures, videos, tweets, facebook status' news stories, and regular search results and organize them so you can use them in a story. Ivan often talks about Storify and how great it is; but now I can say so for myself. It really is a great tool to use in order to gather information and organize it.
My next task was to search for tools that could be used to create an interactive online timeline. I began my search and was not very optimistic because most of the results that came up at first were aimed at teachers and were printable. Then I found this article from Tech & Learning.
From there I began experimenting with different websites. The first one I tried to use was called OurStory. I played around with it for a little while but it seemed like it would be a tool that is more for personal use. It allows you to e-mail friends and family a question. (For example: Do you remember how, when, and why we first met?) Friends and family can then contribute their stories about how they met you, add pictures, and OurStory.com puts them into a timeline.
Preceden is the website that I tried next. It was easy to use but was not very interactive and was not very appealing to the eye. It looked more like an excel program than it did a timeline.
I took a look at timetoast which Ivan used on his blog to make a time line of the Matthews Scandal going on in Kingston. The website allows for interactivity which is good. It allows pop-ups and links to articles.
My favorite tool by far was Dipity. It was easy to use, gave you some freedom for creativity, and was interactive (which is what I was looking for considering it would be used on the web). This is the end product of what I was able to create with Dipity:
The last tool I took a look at was Capzles. I was not able to play around with it for too long; however it was very similar to Dipity. One of my favorite timelines that I found while searching the website seemed more like a photo montage that allowed you to see specific information when you click on the image.
Part of the purpose of this internship is to find tools available online that would be useful to the field of journalism. After becoming to accustomed to making time-lines today. I definitely think that a good program for making interactive time-lines that include information along with photos and videos can be very useful to the field of journalism.
No comments:
Post a Comment