An Ode to Victoria

A Plan for Your Adventure:

I plan to go to various locations in Victoria that are meaningful to me in some way or another. (Mount Doug Park, Willows Beach, Elk Lake, etc.) and use them to draw inspiration for a series of short stories/poems. The only equipment I will need is a camera to take pictures of each place, as the photos will later be used as a “muse”. I may also bring a notebook for writing thoughts on what the stories of these places could be about, as each place will have an individual story, though I may just use my phone. Each of the stories/poems will feature brief fun facts about the place, hopefully making the viewer more interested in learning about the places they live.

What Will be the Shape of Your Story?

My story won’t have a specific shape, though the idea of the storybook is to inspire people to go outside for creative inspiration and use the world around them to write their own stories. I hope to use the natural landscapes of Victoria to inspire empathy, love, and understanding for the land we live on, finding beauty in what is right in front of us rather than seeking out inspiration and content/connection on a screen. The stories will be shaped around certain emotions I personally felt in the spaces I was in, whether that be love, excitement, silence or spookiness, and emphasize those feelings throughout the story so the reader can connect to them as well.

What Kind of Media Will You Produce? 

I plan to use three types of media: photography, drawing, and writing/text. 

• Photography
  • I will photograph the place/object in the area that inspired the story I write, inserting it at the end of each story so readers can see what inspired the story, and maybe draw inspiration of their own.

• Drawing
  • I will sketch a rough image of the inspiration picture, and then personalize it in relation to the story, whether that be the inclusion of the characters of the story, important objects in the story, etc.
• Writing/text
  • This is how the majority of the story/poetry will take place, although the images may provide more context, or a way to build extra connection to the content the viewers are taking in, the emotions, feelings, and life will be brought to the story through text.

How do you plan to integrate the media in alignment with Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia Learning?

I plan to integrate the story to align with Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia Learning by using the personalization principle and the voice principle. I hope that because the places I write about are personal to me, that will come through in my stories, and it will make the reading more personal to the viewers, and therefore, they can take in more information, and learn more about the place we live. I want to use the voice principle similarly, using more informal language to build “connections” with the readers and make them feel as though they are learning from a human and can connect to the content.