This week and next week we are going to produce multimedia versions of our Poppy Poems that were written last week, coinciding with our World War 2 work in history and Remembrance day.
For the last fortnight or so I have been exploring the different web 2.0 multimedia presentation tools, see the list below, and have decided in the end to use Photostory from windows.
This is a list of the various multimedia presentation tools I considered for the job (all web based) :
I eventually decided upon Photostory 3 from Microsoft because I wanted the option to add not only audio to each photograph but an overall soundtrack as well. The fact that it is individual software and not web based was not really an issue, but the actual scope within the software, what you could actually achieve with the tool itself was important.
I like Photostory for a few basic reasons:
- It is really simple and doesn’t over complicate the process.
- Users are taken step by step through the creation. It almost acts like a “wizard” rather than an application.
- The process is linear so you know when you have finished. You can retrace your steps easily too.
- Images can be altered in the application – so you can change all of the images to a sepia tone for example.
I think the children will enjoy the various elements of the application – they begin their work on Tuesday, the first of 2 planned sessions on creating a multimedia Poppy Poem.
Brilliant idea!! I gave our Year 8 students a project to complete based on the “Mr. Men/Little Miss” series where they have to create a character, write a story, produce a booklet and then create a electronic version. All this will then be presented to our Primary students early next year, so it must be done with a real audience in mind. The project is called “Little Tackers”. I’ve deliberatley not mentioned any software/resources to use as I want to see what they are familiar with and what they can do.
I’ll put a blog entry up soon about it.
Did you see there are even more changes to the themes now in edublogs?