Technology in the Education Arena

Last week, I worked with 5 classes of 8th Grade Students on a great project.  The students did research on the presidential candidates.  Each student selected their candidate and wrote an essay focusing on their selection.  They concluded their essay with a brief paragraph on the candidate’s views.  This is where I came in.  We had about 50 minutes in which to learn Photo Story, go to the Internet and download a photo of their candidate, create their own project in Photo Story and record audio (which would be the brief paragraph from their essay), add some effects, titles, and possibly some transitions.  No one had background in Photo Story or making movies — this was all new to the students.

I burned all their movies to a cd and the teacher played them back to each class on our Primary Election day.  Each student was successful; the students loved it; their teacher loved it; I loved it; and the main point — they learned so much and it was authentic, interactive, and learner-centered.  I was very proud of them and it was great collaborating with the teacher on the project.

To view one of the completed projects, check out the movie below.
(Please note that this is not an advertisement for this candidate — just a posting of a student project.) 

Download

Microsoft Photo Story 3 is a free download.  If you have a Mac, you can accomplish this in Garage Band by creating a podcast or using iMovie.  Both programs allow you to add voice, music background, digital images. 

Another interesting thing I tried was to take the completed Photo Story project which is a wmv file viewable with Windows Media Player, run it through Zamzar to convert it to a mov file viewable with QuickTime (which is what I posted).  I am trying that out because I would like to show the project in Second Life on the media player in our school building.  For that, you need it in QuickTime format.