Digital StoryTelling Part III- PhotoStory

If you own a PC, you can download Microsoft’s PhotoStory for free .

To get started creating a story:

1. Download and install the program on your computer.
2. Once installed open the program by clicking “Start”, then “Programs”
   
3. Find the icon for “PhotoStory 3 for Windows”
4. Begin a new story by selecting the radio button and pushing the button
5. PhotoStory is divided into five steps in order to create your digital story. Y ou can move forward or backwards between each step anytime by clicking on the "Back" or "Next" button

Start importing your pictures

Browse your computer for the images. Click on a picture to select it. In order to select more than one picture, hold down the CTRL button while adding additional images to selection. If you want to select all images in a folder, select one image, then push CRTL and the letter “A”. That will select all images in the folder.

Once you have imported all the images that you need for your digital story , you should save your project file. You then have the choice of removing any black borders that are present due to the layout and dimensions of your pictures.

Then it is time to arrange the pictures in order you want them to appear in your story. Simply click on an image in the timeline and drag it to the position you want it. Repeat this step until all your pictures are in the correct order.

After saving each image (by clicking on the "Save" button) that you edited , you are ready to move on to “Add a title to your pictures” by clicking "Next". Here you will have a chance to add the same effects as in the previous step and to add any text to any picture.

In order to create a blank or a colored slide for a title at the beginning, chapter slides in the middle or credits at the end, you can upload a plain colored image or appropriate background to be used with text.

Once all the text slides that you want to incorporate into your movie are in place, click "Next" to move on to narrating and recording your story.

Make sure that you have a microphone attached and have the image selected that you will connect the recording to. Push the round button with the red circle to start recording and the smaller button with the square to stop. Push the "Preview" button to hear your recording. If you do not like the recording just delete it.

Once you are happy with all your narration, you can add "Custom Motion" to each image. The first motion will have the effect as if a video camera is recording your image by zooming in or out, or by panning across the image. The second motion that can be added to your story are transitions between each one of your pictures. When trying to achieve the zooming in or zooming out motions, make sure you have checked off the box "Specify start and end position of customized motion".

Then drag the corners of the starting position to an area you want the motion to start out in. If you want to zoom out, make the starting position rectangle smaller than the ending position. For a zooming in effect do the opposite.

For panning across the image, make the areas to start and end the same size; just position them at opposite ends of the image. To pan from left to right (top to bottom) , position the starting area on the left (top)and the ending (bottom) position on the right. Have fun… experiment a little.

If your zooming or panning motion is too fast for your taste and does not allow for enough time to appreciate the image, you can set the timing of the length of the slide manually.

Save each picture, after you have added motion. To continue adding transitions between each picture, click on the "Transition" tab.

Click on each transition to see a preview of it on the middle window. Save any changes to each image by pushing the "Save" button.

Music can support a story greatly. It can set the tone and mood and even take the place of narrated words. You will only be able to import music files from your computer that are in the .WMA, .MP3 or .WAV format. You can also create your own music within PhotoStory. Just experiment with the settings and preview the melody before adding it to your story.

The last step of creating a digital story with Microsoft PhotoStory is to save the project file as a movie file. There is a big distinction between a PhotoStory file and the movie file (.wmv)

You can tell the difference already by looking at their icons:

This is the project file (.wp3 extention)

• Still able to go back and edit pictures, music, transitions, text, narration, and motion
• Larger file size

This is the movie file (.wmv extension)

• Cannot be edited anymore with Photostory
• Smaller file size
• Ready to upload to a video sharing site, such as YouTube, TeacherTube or Flickr
• Ready to share on any computer that has Windows Media Player

Once you are ready to save your project as a movie file, you can choose the settings that will influence where you can view and how large the file size will be.

If you want to present the completed movie on a full screen on a computer, you might want to choose Profile 3 or 4 for computers, so that the movie will not look fuzzy. If your intentions are to upload the video to the Internet, you might want to stick to Profile 1 or 2 for computers. The resolution is going to be good enough for a smaller window. Choosing profile 1 & 2 will help reduce file size greatly, which your viewers, who will have to download the file, will greatly appreciate.

Technorati Tags: Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling – Part I

Storytelling has been a great part of our school year, which is already winding down. From…

• telling about our and Jose, the travel bear ‘s adventurous stories live while in Egypt
• outfitting EVERY classroom in our school with their own digital cameras, so teachers and students could create a visual of their daily activities or create a visual of a learning concept
• creating a collective knowledge story across grade level and subject areas demonstrating what students have learned
• Life ‘Round Here project, where students assumed the point of view of an object and narrated
• Creating printed books that narrate the daily life in the classroom, special visits and fieldtrips and the physical and academic growth of the students throughout the year.

…to Professional Development in Technology for VoiceThread , Mixbook , PhotoStory , Audacity , and MovieMaker .

Image by CaptPiper

The National Storytelling Network defines:

Storytelling as an ancient art form and a valuable form of human expression

Storytelling is also an ancient form of teaching . Before books, reading and writing became widely spread and available, oral storytelling was the only form the wisdom and knowledge of the people were passed down from elders to children, Nowadays, technology has given us a new twist to this ancient teaching method. By incorporating once again storytelling to paint a picture of our world in order to teach others about our knowledge, culture and people. Digital storytelling gives us the ability to reach and disseminate further our stories than ever before in history. Storytelling, no matter in what form and created in whatever media is a powerful tool to transmit knowledge, culture, perspectives and points of view.

Daniel H. Pink in his book A Whole New Mind says

We are our stories. We compress years of experience, thought, and emotion into a few compact narratives that we convey to others and tell to ourselves. That has always been true. But personal narrative has become more prevalent, and perhaps more urgent, in a time of abundance, when many of us are freer to seek a deeper understanding of ourselves and our purpose.

We wanted to capture with our school wide storytelling theme:

• a moment in time
• a moment in a certain geographical place in our world
• a moment of perspective, that perspective being from a foreigner, a distinct age group, an outside observer, an expert, a teacher, a learner, etc.

The National Storytelling Network explains that:

Storytelling is the interactive art of using words and actions to reveal the elements and images of a story while encouraging the listener’s imagination.

1. Storytelling is interactive.
2. Storytelling uses words.
3. Storytelling uses actions such as vocalization, physical movement and/or gesture.
4. Storytelling presents a story.
5. Storytelling encourages the active imagination of the listeners.

All these components together make a great recipe. It creates an opportunity that allows students to truly use cross-subject skills and knowledge. Students can be creators of new stories, but also listeners of stories created by others who are unlike them. These components can be adjusted and appropriately tuned by the storyteller to the age level and knowledge of the intended audience. Wherever there is a story told, there are listeners exploring new worlds, scenarios and developing critical thinking skills to connect them to their world and their own experiences.

Mark Turner in his book The Literary Mind says that

The literary mind – the mind of stories and parables – is not peripheral but basic to thought. Story is the central principle of our experience and knowledge. Parable – the projection of story to give meaning to new encounters – is the indispensable tool of everyday reason. Literary thought makes everyday thought possible. This book makes the revolutionary claim that the basic issue for cognitive science is the nature of literary thinking.

Storytelling is a useful teaching tool, not only for language arts subjects but sciences as well. Mark Turner continues explaining that

A Story is a basic principle of mind. Most of our experience, our knowledge, and our thinking is organized as stories. The mental scope of story is magnified by projection – one story helps us make sense of another. The projection of one story onto another is parable , a basic cognitive principle that shows up everywhere, from simple actions like telling time to complex literary creations

New technology tools allow us to connect , communicate and collaborate easily with others around the world. Stories are all about these three C’s and lend themselves naturally to create a bridge between teaching and integrating technology. Digital Storytelling is tool that can support teaching and learning in any subject area.

1. We connect on an emotional level with people and events in stories and we connect them to experiences in our own lives.
2. Stories let us communicate our perspective and perception
3. Stories are usually a collaborative effort of stories’ characters, their actions and points of view. Stories that have been passed down through generations allow voices from the past be intermingled with voices from the present. Remixing and re-makes of stories add new twists, new perspectives, new

From ancient teaching method, adapted to today’s digital native students and available technology tools, digital storytelling is combining the best of both worlds.

Through Adobe’s Digital Kids Club, you can read about the following Baker’s Dozen Digital Storytelling Skills written by Bernajean Porter in her book “Digitales: The Art of Telling Digital Stories”

Below are brief definition excerpts from Chapter 4 — “Storying Around for 21st Century Skills” — of DigiTales: the Art of Telling Digital Stories. The following skills have been identified and cross-referenced with National Standards, NETS-S, and 21st Century Skills.

1. Cognitive Apprenticeship — practicing real-world work of digital communication
2. Creativity and Inventive Thinking — creating multi-sensory experiences for others
3. Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) — going beyond existing information to add personal meaning and understanding
4. Enduring Understanding — by telling the story of what you know and understand for others, authors deepen their own self-meaning of the topic
5. Visual Literacy — using images to show, not tell, the narrative story
6. Technical Literacy — mastering the craftsmanship of applying the technology tools to create powerful communication, not to just use the tools, but to mix and dance the media into illuminated understandings
7. Information (Media) Literacy — thinking, reading, writing, and designing effective media information
8. Effective Communication — reading and writing information beyond words
9. Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles — addressing not only the opportunity for students to use their preferred mode of learning and thinking, but also enabling them to practice the effective use of all modalities
10. Teaming and Collaboration — growing skills through practiced opportunities to co-produce group projects
11. Project Management Mentality — Melvin Levin’s challenge for students to practice time management of complex, involved tasks to successfully meet deadlines modeling real-world tasks
12. Exploring Affinity — Melvin Levin’s findings that when students create meaningful, engaged work, they discover themselves as successful learners.

PowerPoint 2007- Creating Visuals

My school updated all computers with the newest version of Microsoft Office 2007 suite last summer. I have to admit, that I have been slow to warm up to it. I do want to share with you the feature of creating visuals from PowerPoint 2007, that I am enjoying tremendously. I don’t necessarily use it only in a presentation style slide, but I am printing them out for flyers or use a screenshot in letters, tutorials, and now blogs.

The example below is from a chart, I am creating for our faculty. I get asked many times what program they should choose when wanting to create a digital story. I usually tell them, it depends on what kind of media they are working with that determines the program that is most suitable.

Create an empty slide with no title, then on your Toolbar ribbon, choose the Insert tab and click on SmartArt.

This will allow you to choose from a large variety of visuals. You can pre-select from lists, processes, cycle, hierarchy, relationship, matrix or pyramid style graphics here. Don’t be too concerned in picking the "right" layout here, since it is very easily changed and edited later on.

No you can enter your text in an outline form, or if you choose directly into the visual.

Just right click on a button and choose to add a shape after, before, below or above. The rest of the layout, including the size of buttons and font will adjust according to the quantity of shapes you choose.

Once you have all your shapes and labels in place, it is time to have fun with colors, design, style and layout.

Just by moving your mouse over the different choices, the layout will adjust accordingly.

Changing colors…

Choose from 2-D or 3-D styles

And change the look again, by simply moving your mouse over another choice. Very cool.