Digital Picture Projects for the Classroom

Help!

That seems to be a common cry from teachers. :-D

This summer I am teaching a class on projects you can do with your students or for your students to area educators. I am looking for examples and resources. I have found a few, but I'd like to know what everyone is using and what is prefered.

I really like PhotoStory3, MovieMaker, and VoiceThread. Are there any others you recommend?

I am also looking for examples I can use in class. Do you have any projects you or your kids have done that you are proud of? I'd love to share them with other teachers. Or, do you recommend any sites with examples already on there?

I'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks!

Lee Anne

Tags: Digital, Pictures

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Permalink Reply by Cathy Nelson on June 4, 2007 at 11:07am

Look for Scrapblog as a tool to use as well.
Don't forget to include photo storage sites like Flickr, Fauxto, and Photobucket. Some of these offer neat tools to use as well. I really like the tools available from Flickr.

There also many free downloadable photo editors that are simple and easy to use like Photowipe and Google's Picasa

Fun to do with photos:
Rock You
Bubbleshare

I wish I could say i has some really neat projects to share, but i don't.

I have some examples, but I'm currently in transition in jobs. Perhaps I'll try to upload them to TeacherTube.

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Permalink Reply by Lee Anne Morris on June 4, 2007 at 1:18pm

Oh my gosh! Talk about a bunch of adults not getting anything done! We have been having a blast with the "rock you" software. Thanks for the share!

Lee Anne

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Permalink Reply by Kevin H. on June 4, 2007 at 11:12am

Hi

We are just finishing up a Digital Science Book project that uses PowerPoint as the platform for composition. It has its limitations but my sixth graders loved moving deeper into the software and then sharing with younger grades in our school. One thing I have been interested in is their perceptions of what happens to their books when they move from the animated version in PP to a flat version on the page.

Here are the books (some are still being revised): Digital Science Books

We are also in the midst of a claymation stop-motion animation project (that seems to be going slower than I had hoped and the end of the year just around the corner!) but we use a free animation software and then moviemaker to edit and add narration. This is a collaborative project between sixth and second graders and they are basically in charge of all of the production. I don't have any samples to show you yet.

But this is a site of last year's movies, using still images: Clay Movies

The free stopmotion software is at http://www.clayanimator.com/english/stop_motion_animator.html

Good Luck!
Kevin

PS -- I also have been experimenting with a free program called Pivot, which is a stickman animation program that saves stories as a .gif file. Very fun and easy to use. Good intro into moviemaking. (http://www.snapfiles.com/get/stickfigure.html)

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Permalink Reply by Lee Anne Morris on June 4, 2007 at 1:19pm

Some really great stuff here. Thanks so much!

Lee Anne

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Permalink Reply by James Dykstra on June 5, 2007 at 3:43pm

Just downloaded that Pivot program. That is really amazing. Any art teacher would love it and I wish I'd had it before I tried to have my kids do stopmotion animation. That is so cool.

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Permalink Reply by Kristian Still on June 4, 2007 at 1:52pm

Lee, we combined voice thread with some simple storyboards that the students used to help them plan their voicethread. The quality was much improved.

Slide.com is very similar to rockyou. We use it to help students connect to key terms / words.
In this case, terminology used to describe the components of teamwork.

http://btecnationalsinsport.wikispaces.com/BTEC+Year+1+Slide+Presen...

Our students like / use movie maker. But they also like to mash things up using http://mojiti.com/

Hope this helps. (PS Tried scrapblog - liked it alot)

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Permalink Reply by Lee Anne Morris on June 4, 2007 at 2:23pm

Great! Thanks so much for sharing. Cool stuff!
Lee Anne

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Davis on June 4, 2007 at 6:09pm

I worked with my art teacher to put together a project on Surrealism. We showed students some examples of famous surrealist painters (Dali, Magritte and others). We then had them either find pictures on the web, or take digital photos and manipulate them to create their own surreal images. We used KidPix, which wasn't ideal, but worked. I'm thinking next year we will do this project, then post the images on Flickr and have students comment on each other's images writing about the meaning behind the image.

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Permalink Reply by Lee Anne Morris on June 5, 2007 at 9:40am

Thanks, Elizabeth. I like the art idea.

Lee Anne

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Permalink Reply by Alex Savage on June 5, 2007 at 12:58am

Have you tried bubbleshare.com ?
It is a very simple to use tool for uploading images onto the web. It also enables you to add audio and video to each image.
I found a great activity that a class did on a blog for a French lesson.
If you'd like to have a look at life in Norwich, UK have a look at this blog post we did in a project linking with a school in the USA.

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Permalink Reply by Lee Anne Morris on June 5, 2007 at 9:46am

Thanks Alex. Bubbleshare looks great. I've had trouble getting it to complete the process for me - errors in loading, it says, both when I try to create something new and when I try to view your students' work. Do you think it is me, or is this a Bubbleshare issue? Just curious if you have any insight.

Thanks again for the share!
Lee Anne