Open Resource Centre

If U want to see the power of Cooliris? Try this from @shareski via Twitter

This presentation has been adapted by Alan Levine

It shows how online tools can transform how we present and share

To navigate, I simply used the ‘down’ arrow and the presentation, including videos worked brilliantly. There are also some great clips that reflect good and poor pedagogy.

If you haven’t come across Microsoft Photostory, then read on.

It is a very simple and free piece of software that takes your digital still pictures and allows you to have some movement, zooming in and out, as well as adding music or narration.

The end result is a video that can be viewed on Media Player

It truly is an excellent motivation and presentation tool

Stretton Handley Primary School, inspired by photographs they saw of winter scenes, used PhotoStory to create winter poems.

Click here to read their poems (Windows Media Player 10 or above needed)

Staffordshire ICT  have put together a help sheet for pupils  using PhotoStory. It includes an assessment chart at the end.

There are some useful tips too on the following website:
http://www.windowsphotostory.com/

Thanks to Mandy

To edit and join video clips together, use Microsoft Movie maker – you will find it in Start – Programmes – tutorial here

To add video to a powerpoint slide, click on menu

• Insert – Movies and sounds – Movie from file
• Then select your video file from location ie find it!
• You will then be asked if you want this to play automatically – click yes
• Resize the video frame to full screen as you would a photo

If you have any digital photos, use Photostory to create a zooming video slide show of your photos with music if wanted – tutorial here

To add a Photostory show to Powerpoint follow the instructions above

If you are using Canon Ixus camera to take your video, you will need to download and run a special file – called a codec
Having made up your slides, create the self-running slide show by setting up Powerpoint as follows:

In slide show menu – set up show

Browse at a kiosk – full screen

• Show all slides
• Loop continuously
• No show scroll bar
• Advance slides using timings if present

In slide show menu – slide transition

• Fade smoothly or fade through black or choose your own from the list
• Speed – slow
• Advance slide automatically after 2 sec
• Apply to all slides

Sounds hard but is quite simple – honest – even I can do it!

Thank goodness for this post.  Photostory is a tool I am promoting as one of my “beyond Powerpoint” strategies.  I was thinking of making a screencast, but it seems I’ve been relieved of this task -thanks again to the Fischbowl for doing this

Photo Story 3 Tutorial Screencast

I thought it was about time I posted an update on Bubbleshare.

Following previous posts Bubbleshare – online picture, photo and album sharing and

Adding bubbleshare slideshows to your blog post

I took another look today at the functionality of the site. Quite simply, bubbleshare has become quite a sophisticated digital storytelling device  in which I’m sure will engage reluctant writers to begin putting some ideas together.

Bubbleshare first of all allows you to upload photo albums, but once that is done the fun begins.  Students can then annotate each photo with a speech bubble entering their own text and adding fun gizmos like hats and bright red lips – these may not be to everybody’s taste.

Having done that, students can then add their own voice annotation to each photograph.

———————————————————————————————— This album is powered by BubbleShare – Add to my blog ————————————————————————————————-

So it’s a bit like using Microsoft’s photostory 3 (Using photostory in the classroom) which is an excellent way of putting together audio and photos, but the downside is it is not online so not so simple to distribute or embed in a blog – you could, however, upload it to Youtube or add to a VodPod

I think this would be well worth investigating further and will provide a number of opportunities within the classroom to be creative as well as engaging students in the writing process — let me know how you get on.

see an example here