Photostory on how to Photostory

If you or someone you know has never tried using Photostory in the classroom...What are you waiting for? Photostory is an excellent peice of software for the classroom. Our teachers have their students use it for Book Trailers, Foreign Languages, and much more.

I decided to put together a "How to" video using Photostory itself. It's a little long but quite helpful.

Book Trailers

As a kid in school, just a few years ago, I can remember doing book report after book report. The books we had to read weren't all that interesting and the reports were even less so.

Lately it seems to me that some really good books for kids have come out. Great plots, interesting characters, and just all around good stories. In fact, many of these books have such great stories that they seem to turn into movies overnight.

As a result of these read-worthy books and the advancement of technology, our students have started started to create book trailers instead of book reports. We don't want them to give the story away, but rather give the viewer enough information and curiosity to make them want to read the book.

Check out the following trailer created by one of our students using Microsoft Photostory 3:

Here is what you need:

Devices - Digital Camera (cell phone, pocket camcorder, etc), a computer, (microphone optional)

Programs - Photostory 3, Animoto, Garage Band, iMovie, Windows MovieMaker, PowerPoint/Keynote

Important Teaching Points when creating book trailers:

• Create a storyboard as a rough draft
• Mood & music are very important to a trailer
• Time vs. Attention - think about movie trailers and t.v. commercials
• Text cannot be read easily when it is overtop of a picture
• PPT/Keynote can be used to create jpegs of text (text slides)
• Copyright & Permissions - Use pictures/music in Public Domain and cite your sources (see comments below for listing of recommended websites)
• Do not claim images or music as your own if you did not create them

Book Trailers instead of book reports

A teacher that I work with came to me with an idea to have the students do a book trailer instead of a book report. We decided to use Microsoft Photostory 3. Here is the best one created by one of our students.