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When telling a story, words can convey so much. However, when you can tell a story using words, pictures, music, and your own voice – the power of the message becomes exponentially greater. Even those unenthusiastic writers may show a glimmer of interest when presented with this program as a medium to create a project.

Photo Story 3 is a free download for Windows XP and greater computers. It is a program that is very easy to learn and show others how to create their own digital movies, narrate them, set them to music tracks, and publish them for others to view. Students can create their own videos for just about any topic you can think of. Turn them loose with a couple of digital cameras and see what they can come up with. Don’t have any digital cameras? Use Flickr to search for photographs relating to the topic and have students use those.

Here are directions on how to download music to Photo Story 3 from a CD as well as general Photo Story directions. (The directions on downloading music were created by Melissa Given.)

There are some ideas and websites listed below for inspiration.

The following activities are just a few samples from TeachersInTouch.
* Learn how to create a farewell, end-of-year video file that will be remembered long after the streamers are cleaned up and the DJ has gone home. Using still images and text, you can create a video file complete with music and narration using Microsoft Photo Story.

* What I should have done in the holidays – Students always write a recount of what they did in their holidays. Here is a way to make their recount dynamic and more meaningful. Using Photo Story 3, students narrate their
recounts making their everyday recount come to life in visual and audio multimedia.

* In this activity, students create a Photo Story video file using still images, text, narration and sound files to advertise and promote sun safety. Throughout this lesson, students will gain an understanding and appreciation of their home climate and its affect on skin.

* Waltzing Matilda – In this activity, students are asked to analyse the meaning behind a well known song or quote. Students create a visual audio story using Microsoft Photo Story and synchronize it with a PowerPoint presentation detailing the song lyrics along with their own interpretation.

Websites with examples:

Digitalcamerasined – a wiki with resources on using digital photography in general in the classroom along with Photo Story 3. Lots of great ideas!

ReadWriteThink - Here is a website that has a lesson plan and activities using Photo Story 3 and/or Movie Maker from the ReadWriteThink site.

Oh to be a kid again – sometimes….

But here’s one way to play at least a little bit with one of the great “old” toys. Remember Mr. Potato Head? I even had Mrs. Potato Head and had a blast playing with them. As I got older I thought that their “storage compartment” was hysterical and even now kind of wish that my “storage compartment” would be so easy to unload! LOL!

ANYWAY presenting....Mr. Picassohead – Fun site that would be great to play with on a Smartboard/Whiteboard – have a couple of students create a “head” and then have a writing activity based around the emotions expressed by the face, or a poem about how the head came to look that way, or a story about this alien who just happened to show up in our class…………

You could also just flip through the gallery for some inspiration for that writing assignment. Here is the one that I created in about 3 minutes.

And guess what? You also sneaked in some learning about a particular artists’ style. shhh…don’t tell the kids you did that…kind of like extra vitamins in the milk shake…:)

Writing is probably one of the most painful activities to a student. Why? Because most often teachers are having students COPY someone else’s words that mean nothing to them. Or if the student is being tortured with a “free-write” or “journal entry” – what has the average student done in their life that is memorable enough to write about? Another problem with poor attitudes towards writing – how many books with good examples of writing have students read by this age? How can they write well if they’ve never read examples worth emulating?

So – the first hurdle is getting students to at least have a working relationship with words and sometimes that’s easier said than written…er…done…

One tool that could hook their interest could be the Comic Creator. This site gives students several pre-made backgrounds, characters, and props in order to tell their story. Students could retell the plot of The Tell-Tale Heart or come up with an alternate ending to The Pit and the Pendulum. You could create a weekly strip using students for the characters and make a bulletin board with them or add them to the class newspaper. A couple of draw backs to this particular site are the choices are rather limited and printing is only in black & white. However, it’s a good start.

KABAM! is another comic strip site but this one has pre-created strips with story lines. The cool thing about this site is the stories have to do with typical teenage issues and the creator is asked to help finish the story and as a reward for answering correctly, they get to create their own stories. Excellent site for students to have access to if they have some extra time on their hands.

Another excellent tool for students to learn how words can interact is the acrostic word puzzle. Acrostic puzzles are ones that use the letters in a word as the first letter in other words that describe the first word. This can get kids to really exercise their brains in thinking of adjectives, adverbs, strong verbs to help spice up their poems. Once finished, kids can print them out and then decorate or mount on paper to show off to friends and you.

Once kids learn to have an enjoyable passing acquaintance with words, stringing them together into sentences and paragraphs can be less painful for all involved – hopefully.