Photo Story 3
Create your own stories with pictures
I would like to tell you about a Windows program that I have used in
preschool with children as young as 3 to 6 years. It is a program from Microsoft
and it is called Photo Story 3. The best thing with the program is that is for
free to download to your computer and very easy to learn and use. You can use
it as a private person to personalize your pictures adding sound, titles or
background music of your choice so that you can enjoy your favourite moments or
you can make a professional presentation out of your photos and images. Photo
Story saves your photo project as WMV files (window media video files) so that you
can play it on your computer. Finished picture files can be small enough to
send by email, too.
When you download Photo Story 3 and open the program the wizard offers
you three choices, that is: Begin a new
story, edit a project, or play a story.
The program offers help to all beginners
by explaining every step and even provides extras as advises, tips and tricks
so that you can get the best out of your picture project. It is very simple to
use for teachers in any subject or theme. By showing pictures and adding text
the children are more likely to remember and learn. What better way to learn
than to do it yourself. You can as teacher ask your pupils to make a project in
small groups about a subject letting them search the web and gather information
and pictures about the subject. Then when they are finished they can play the
presentation for their classmates.
In my preschool department where I was working the children ages were 3
to 6 years. We the teachers always worked after a theme and we always took many
pictures and did portfolios to every child. The children where always so good
at dramatization and the parents only saw the pictures and not the real show. So
one day we decided to create a story with our pictures by using Photo Story 3. It
was a perfect way to show the parents what their children do in one day when they
are at preschool. We collected many photos of children’s performance and imported
them in Photo Story. Then by the help of children we recorded their voices so
they could tell us what was happening during the picture film. The children
even as young as they were they could help us by telling us in which order the
pictures should be. They could then say what they did in the pictures and we
recorded their voices. I think it was fun and educational for them as it was
for us.
Photo Story 3 is a great program for beginners even as young as
preschool children. It is a great way to introduce ICT (Information and Communications Technology) to pupils.
So start sharing
your stories today!
This is a YouTube video of how a Photo Story works
I have used this program as well in school and at home to make birthday collages and similiar. The downside with this program though is that you can't use movie clips in it and that you can't work with more than one picture at the same time. Which have had some students of mine very annoyed and bored because they wanted to show all their pictures for 3 seconds each and they had to edit it one by one instead for all at once.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe you can do that but I don't know how, if you do please tell me.
The kids usually love to use this program. They think it's fun to record their own voices and the add music. It is also my experience that they love to experiment with their pictures when using this program.
It is also a great exersice in story telling and about telling things in order and in cathegories. It's a very good program for younger kids. Kids who are more experienced can try Windows Movie Maker. It is a bit more advanced which is why I usually nominate this program instead.
I thought that was a great program! I can see myself working with seven year- olds doing stories, and let them write one or two sentences to each picture, or maybe just one word of they just started school. But I can also see how you can use it with older children when they are learning English, and doing almost the same thing but in a new language. I’m a bit concerned though about how much time it will take, especially in the beginning to upload pictures. It feels like that is something I need to do on my planingtime, and it will probably take a while in the beginning. And I need a camera in class that works with the computer. The best way to use the program I feel is with a smartboard so all the children can see at the same time. I will try this program for sure, it sounds like fun!
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