He presented a play-by-play
of how foreign language teachers could use PhotoStory 3 to create digital
stories and have the audio be the student’s voice speaking the foreign language
throughout the story.
PhotoStory is different than
iMovie and MovieMaker in that it allows you to include everything, but videos. All music within the
program is pre-approved. If you wish to use your own music, you can, but of
course, you need to be sure that you fall within the guidelines of fair use.
In the Spring of 2009, I had
my French II classes create a digital story based on an event from their past
(something that occurred in childhood, real or imaginary). Students had to
utilize past tense (le passé compose) and the imperfect (l’imparfait) correctly
in order to tell a descriptive, but action-packed story.
Because every aspect of the
technology was new for both the students and me, I wanted to keep the activity
simple and guided. For this first time, I didn’t offer a lot of technology
freedom.
As guided by Mr. Couet, I
had the students think of a simple event of their childhood and use the
“handouts” version of blank powerpoint slides as their storyboards so that they
could create their text and make sure that it was grammatically correct by the
time the audio recording came around as well as keep tabs on the number of
slides they were creating in order to meet the rubric requirements (5-7 plus a
title and ending slide). Students could also outline the picture that would
best describe the text of the story at that particular point.
As for pictures, I didn’t
have the students use real photos, I wanted them to keep the child-like feel
and draw our pictures with crayons, markers, or colored pencils. The students
could scan the pics in to a flash drive or their school account via the media
center scanner or a scanner at home. We also used original works because citing
sources is very important to me and being this our first digital storytelling
project, we wanted it to be as simple as possible with regards to citing
sources.
My students thoroughly
enjoyed creating the digital stories as well as watching their classmates
finished products.
It was the highest rated
project of my career!
In the Spring of this year,
I would like to attempt another digital story…and have my students either take
pictures of themselves with a digital camera or create videos while using a
flip video camera. This time, they would record their own audio, this time
using Audacity. I will probably have Win 7 by then and will fully switch gears to
MovieMaker.
Creating digital stories is
easy and rewarding! Students not only enjoy creating them, but watching the
creativity of others shine---and digital stories are perfect for the student
who is a little timid in front of an audience. The digital story can be played,
thus reducing anxiety of speaking in front of a large group.
As a future library media specialist, I feel that digital stories are a great way for students to express themselves as well as share their knowledge on a specific subject.
I look forward to broadening
my horizons with the different types of options to make photo stories.
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