We are firm believers that our students need opportunities to create. Our world is inundated with tools and sites and media and social platforms for consumption. The more we can get our kids creating the better. When someone is creating, they begin to think about purpose. And with all the media outlets and messaging coming at our students, they need to hone those thinking skills about why and what’s the purpose behind a technology, website, or piece of media.
Virtual reality development is exploding right now. Many industries are putting energy into researching and developing ways to incorporate VR technologies into daily practices. Luckily for us, we can have our students create VR experiences using Chromebooks or other laptop devices. Storyspheres.com is a website that allows users to upload a 360º image, add audio tracks, and create an immersive VR experience with imagery and audio.
Here’s an example of a story sphere:
To get your story sphere created, there are a few basic steps:
1. Storyboard: Write a script/plan for your project. Include your planned shots and audio clips.
2. Take 360º photo. (Alternative: Find and save 360º photo to your computer.)
3. Record Audio Clips.
4. Assemble your Story Sphere project on the Story Spheres website.
Why Step 1? Why storyboard?
Writing a plan and scripting out the content is important – otherwise time is lost and execution becomes sloppy. Students will become enamored with creating a VR experience. By having them script out their content first, this ensures focus on content, writing, and planning prior to students losing focus on the “shiny new object.”
Here are a few storyboarding templates that you can copy and make use of:
Step 2: Take your photo. Find the 360º content.
Set the Scene
Go ahead and take a 360º photo using Google Street View. For best results shoot the entire scene.
- Get that photo to your computer in whatever way works for you.
- Upload to Drive through the mobile app.
- Email the image as an attachment to yourself.
SAMPLE RESOURCES for your project:
Flickr Public Group
DRIVE FOLDER OF 360º IMAGES
Getty Library of 360º Images
Step 3: Creating the audio tracks.
- Record short audio clips to place in Story Sphere to tell the “story” of the image/location, etc.
- Easy to record in http://vocaroo.com/ (Works on Chromebooks)
- If your students have mobile devices, they could use a voice recorder app as well and save the MP3s to Drive.
- ***Must be .mp3 files
- Look for the small “Save mp3” option after your record on Vocaroo. It is a small link.
- Select some background music from the shared folder.
- Save that as well.
Step 4: Assembling the Project
Go to the Story Spheres website.
https://www.storyspheres.com/
Here you will upload your 360º image and audio files.
- Sign into Story Spheres using your Google account.
- Upload image
- Upload ambient sound (background music file). Test out audio controls
- Upload narration/speaking sounds (one at a time). Test out & set audio controls
- Save & Preview Story Sphere
- View for web
- View for cardboard
- View for embedding into web page
Story Spheres- FAQ
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