Creating Digital Stories with Photo Story 3

Students often learn routinely, without grasping the concepts, which can result in demotivation and lack of creativity. By using technology tools and resources that are relevant to today’s learners, teachers can inspire students to think creatively and show originality in their work.This tutorial is designed for educators who are new to Photo Story 3 and shows in simple steps how to create activities that will inspire students to be creative, inventive and motivated to produce original content.

In this tutorial you will:

1) Understand how to use Photo Story 3 to create a powerful story with digital images.

2) Understand how Photo Story 3 can be used to spark creativity and engagement.

3) Create an activity which will inspire students to think creatively.

Tools: Photo Story 3; Windows Media Player

ICT Skill Level Required:

1. By using Photo Story 3 students will be able to create powerful stories from their digital photos.

They can add special effects, narration and sound to their photos to make them more dynamic. They can also personalize the photos with titles or captions.

Use Photo Story 3 in class Create digital stories with Photo Story 3 Download Microsoft Photo Story 3 here

2. If you can’t visit a museum it’s possible to visit virtual museums and download images that hold a

creative commons license. Here‘s two useful links to virtual museums around the world: MuseumLink

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Virtual Tours

3. After you collected or downloaded the photos you want to use, read this step-by-step guide to do

the following:

a. First add the photos you want to have in your story and arrange them in the order you want them to be viewed.

b. You can edit photos by clicking on them in the filmstrip. You can rotate the photo, adjust the color, fix red eye and add different effects.

c. In the next step you can add a title and place it anywhere in the photo. Use any color and font that you like.

d. Personalize the story by adding narration to it and customizing the motion path, which means that you can zoom in and out to highlight important details. In order to add narration to your story, you need a microphone. You can also add different pieces of music to different images. If you want you can select music files from your computer for the

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audio but be aware of copyright restrictions. Alternatively you could create your own song sing Microsoft Songsmith. Find out more about Songsmith here.

e. To save you story, use the default option of saving for playback on your computer. Your story will be viewed in Windows Media Player.

f. You can arrange your photos as a chain of associations, so that one image leads to another. Students could then be asked to discover the connection between images. To engage them more deeply and to inspire their creativity and inventiveness, let your students create their own photo stories. This will help them develop their critical thinking skills and require them to generate new concepts by analyzing and synthesizing the information they have.

Further Resources and Ideas

1. Find out how these teachers use Photo Story 3 to teach students about Digital Identity2. Find out how this teacher uses Photo Story 3 to share student work in Greetings from the world3. Instead of Photo Story 3, you can also use Windows Live Photo Gallery to create digital stories.

Framework Alignment

UNESCO CfT – Technology Literacy (Pedagogy, Integrate Technology) ISTE – Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity (1c,d), Design and Develop Digital-

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Age Learning Experiences and Assessments (2b,c) and Model Digital Age Work and Learning (3a,b,c,d)

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