Photo Story as an ICT resource

Photo Story is a program from Microsoft which you can use to make digital presentations. In the presentaions you can add picture - your own or from a general archive and to the pictures you can add text, music and recorded speech.

As I said before, Photo Story is a program from Microsoft and you can download it for free from their homepage.

To make this program work on your computer you need a license version of Windows and you need to have Windows Media Player 10 installed as well. To be able to record speech you must have access to a microphone or a headset.

Photo Story contains easy step-for-step instructions so both you as a teacher and your pupils easy will learn how to use it. When I first tried it, I did not have any pre-knowledge of the program and I learned very quick how to use it.

How Photo Story can be used by teachers and pupils

Photo Story as an ICT resource in the classroom can be used in multiple ways, the only thing that stops you is your imagination. Teachers can use the program to e.g. to introduce new areas of work, lectures, storytelling and much more. Pupils can use Photo Story to e.g. do different kinds of assignments, documentary a day out or a study visit the class made or things like that.

I have tried this program myself to do a Storytelling of the book Spotty and I totally fell in love with it! I am sure that this is a program I will use many, many times in my future work as a teacher.

I also think that this is a program which the pupils will appreciate to work with because first of all it is fun and also because I think that they will feel very proud of their final productions. Certainly will some pupils feel umcomfortable to hear their own recorded voice but this could be a good way to get knowledge of how important the pronunciation is. I also think that Photo Story is a good program to pupils who think it is uncomfortable to speak in front of the whole class, because maybe they will think it is easier to show a Photo Story they had made.

Other considerations when using Photo Story as an ICT resource

When you are using Photo Story as an ICT resource you must think about the copyright of pictures. If you have use pictures you have draw or taken with a camera yourself you do not have to worry about the copyright at all. A good idea is to have a scanner or a digital camera available! If you choose to use picture from different websites you must use pictures with no copyright. Websites that offers an archive of pictures without no copyright is e.g.

• www.flickr.com
• www.multimedia.skolverket.se
• www.fotofinnaren.se