ICT Tip: Ask your students to create digital slideshows quickly and easily with Photo Story!

29 Sep

Quick overview: A free application that allows your students to create a digital sideshow with copyright free music and their own digital photos.

Update August 2011: This application only works on Windows XP and Microsoft has taken down the download link. We are working on finding a web based alternative to this resource. Do you know of any? Contact us!

What does it do? Photo Story allows you or your students to easily create a “digital slideshow” out of images taken with a digital camera or images from the Internet. Photo Story can even generate copyright free music for the slideshow, no musical talent necessary!

How can it be used in the classroom? Nancy Peterson from the Pontiac Adult Education and Vocational Training Centre (WQSB) showed me how she used Photo Story in conjunction with a class field trip.  Her class took digital pictures during a “sugaring off” field trip and once they got back to the classroom, they pooled together all their digital images and imported them into Photo Story. The students then took turns adding their own vocal narration for each slide. Once complete, they exported the digital slide show as a PC movie file. Nancy was really impressed with the results and so was I!

Video Tutorial: In order to explain step-by-step how a Photostory is created, I’ve created an on-line video tutorial which can be viewed below:

Technical note: Photo Story is a desktop application. This means in order to use Photo Story, it must be downloaded and installed locally on a Windows computer.  If you do not know how (or have the rights) to install software in your computer lab, you can ask for help from your IT department. The digital slideshow files that Photostory 3.0 produces (.WMV files) can be played on any Windows computer, even if Photo Story is not installed.