Digital Storytelling

So now that I've finished my first digital story, I'm already thinking about others in the future. It didn't take as long as it could have, and I'm sure that it will become a much quicker process with practice. I like the idea of being able to make more than just a slideshow put to music, which was my own previous experience with similar technology. Utilizing the microphone just added an entirely new dimension to the process - something like combining a picture slideshow you could make in powerpoint and what I did with Photostory 3. The next step? Video clips - I saw a digital story online that combined both still image and video, and I thought it came out very well.

What I am curious about is how similar PhotoStory 3 functions. I know that it doesn't use video, but it does have sections for inputting both music and narration (though I'm not sure whether you can do both at the same time). It does have additional functions that Moviemaker doesn't seem to have - you can rotate your photos and crop them. However, adding the transitions between the pictures is a bit more complicated - well, there's more clicking rather, which can get annoying if you have a lot of pictures. It automatically pans in and out, so if that's all you want, then I would prefer it. I'm glad I went with movie maker for this particular story, as I wanted to use different transitions than that. I suppose, then, it's an issue of what you want to do with the digital story. Something simple with music or narration in the background and the ability to easily crop in on the faces you want to see (Photostory 3)? Or something with more varied transitions and the ability to slice and dice with your music and narration (Moviemaker)?

But back to that first sentence: my burgeoning ideas. I'd love to do one for my mom (read a poem I wrote and add in some appropriately sappy music) and also to create one with the majority of my picture from the Galapagos Islands. Actually, it would be cool to get out my pictures from when I went to Europe and do the same. A new kind of travel journal. Very interesting idea. You could add in music native to the places you visited too.

I was also thinking of creating class digital stories (or one team one) on "what is science" for the first week of school. On the first day last year I gave them all an index card, and each of them drew an image of what they thought science was. I could have the kids vote on their images (to choose the best ones, especially as I got multiple volcanoes and solar systems last year) and then either scan in their index cards or take close-up pictures of the cards. Then they could choose the best speakers (or I could draw names out of a hat...whatever), and each speaker could say the name of what's in the image or describe why it's science. I could add a little music in the background, and easily throw the thing together to show them on the last day of that first week.

They'd have created a really great representation of where they started off the year. Then I could possibly end the year the same way, and they could compare the two to determine what they as a class/team had learned. Additionally, this would give them an immediate exposure to what technology can do and make them part of the process - something my kids didn't get to do a lot of last year.