Video Ethnography COMM 7728 - Elizabeth Ferry

I was assigned to complete a video ethnography for one of my final projects of my IT&DML classes.  It was a very interesting process for me to complete this assignment.  I had a chance to reflect back on my entire life and figure out a way to use technology to allow others to see who I am as an individual and as a professional.

Although there a good number of programs that I could have used to create my ethnography, I decided to try a program recommended by our professor called Sound Slides.  I had never worked with the program before, but it did not take me long to figure out how to import photos and order them for the presentation.  The only difficult part I had was figuring out which photos to use and scanning the photos that were taken before digital photographs existed.  It was fun to look through old photos and reminisce on my life!

I wanted to include both music and a narrative with my ethnography.  One of the examples our professor provided us with had this feature and I liked how the presentation flowed.  There were a few bumps along the way for me though when completing this part of the project.  First, I needed to make sure that the music I selected could be used by others under the Creative Commons License.  I used the website Free Music Archive to find instrumental music for my ethnography.  There were a variety of genres and options to choose from, but I finally decided on a piece created by Josh Woodward titled "Once Tomorrow".

After I selected the music it was very easy to import it into my slide show.  The biggest bump I faced was when I attempted to put my narrative in the presentation while the music was playing.  I used Screencast-o-matic to record my screen while the presentation was playing so I could narrate for each picture.  Initially I had awful feedback when I attempted to use only my laptop microphone to complete the narration.  Since I wanted this to include this project in my digital portfolio, I wanted to make sure the sound was as good as it could possibly be therefore, I decided to invest in an external microphone for my computer.  Once I purchased the microphone I was then able to complete the narration of the presentation.  Unfortunately it did take me a few attempts to complete the narration, due to my barking dog and laughing son!  In the end though it was a great learning experience and I am very pleased with the final product.

The following is my video ethnography for COMM 7728, I hope you enjoy it!