Vuvox: Tell Stories With Video Murals

With the ascendancy of Common Core Standards as the new normal in classroom teaching requirements, many bloggers have written about integrating previously excluded visual arts disciplines like digital imaging, audio design and video editing into A thru G curricula. Concurrently, interest in Web 2.0 sites with built-in tool sets that work regardless of your operating system, or computing device are becoming mainstream in classrooms across the country. I would like to submit a free, multimedia, web-based, storytelling site into the mix called, VuVox.com.

Vuvox: The Video Mural Storytelling Tool
Vuvox allows you to create a video mural which is made up of still images, audio files, text, and custom hyperlinks to form a moving panorama of engaging, interactive narratives.You build your video mural by digitally stitching images togethe similar to creating a panorama from related image files. The hyperlink integration tool  connects selected images in your video mural to other websites, or original content (You Tube).  Let's take a brief look under the hood, and review the Vuvox tool set.

(Example 1)

Example 1 shows the Vuvox playback stage interface. I'm using Familiar Faces?, a demonstration piece I created from my original digital portraits archive. As you can see above the stage, Vuvox uses tabs to access tutorial and reference information. Below the stage are basic play-forward-rewind icons, a volume control, and a fullscreen display icon. Vuvox permits users to organize their finished works into custom content channels to which viewers can subscribe. The green edit button (on the bottom left) opens up the edit stage interface which we will explore next.

(Example 2)

The Edit Stage 
To begin drag and drop images into the stage. When you click on an image file, a green rectangle surrounds the selected image revealing a simple yet powerful set of editing tools. The scissors button allows you to cut away image sections with an adjustable Bezier tool (for drawing smooth curves) and automatically placing the remaining image on an invisible layer above the stage. This sets up the illusion of blending one image over or under the other. To the right of the highlight example are dimensional arrows to move the images forward and backward, from layer to the stage. Below the forward/backward icons is image resize. To the left of scissors is the hyperlink icon. When used in conjunction with the text button (see Example 4) you can create a text balloon that hovers over the image and links it to additional online content. When the viewer is finished with the link she can return to the Vuvox window and continue playing the mural. At the top of Example 2, are five buttons: Adjust settings, preview your work, save as, and exit editing mode; pretty self-explanatory.

(Example 3)

Built-in Customizable Image Storage Bins

Below the editing stage are a handy set of tabs for content storage. This is really cool!  Vuvox automatically creates tabbed storage bins for your images, including tabs that automatically open to popular online albums like Flickr, Picasa, or SmugMug, There is a convenient tab to hold your custom Bezier cut outs, and access to  Library, a ready-made collection of images from Vuvox with built-in transparencies so you can easily collage them into your project. Also, don't overlook Google Images as a content resource. It's searchable and it offers a great opportunity for teachers to model best practices by showing how to attribute source information.

Example 4

Example 4 continues the edit stage (cut off in Example 3) with controls for inserting color text and titles, and audio MP3 files from online or offline sources. The "?"  tab opens with suggestions for additional editing techniques.

Vuvox is a free web based app that only requires a valid email to open an account. Actually, you don't need an account to build a Vuvox video. However, you can't save your work without one. Paid accounts are available. See Vuvox.com for more information. I have found that the free version works well for most classroom purposes.  As with many other online creation sites you can choose whether your work is open to the public or restricted. It's a snap to create a link to your work for emails, or embed it in your webpage or blog. The simplicity of the Vuvox interface makes modeling its creation elements appropriate even for elementary grades.

Once you begin to play with it you'll quickly begin to envision group or individual projects with it. Vuvox is simply amazing!

Below is the complete Familiar Faces? demonstration video with music by  Zoot Sims and Stephan Grappelli.