Heritage Park – Digital Story Telling

Two groups of students from Heritage Park have been writing and illustrating short stories at the CLC over the past few weeks, using 3 different bits of software. They began using Kar2ouche – this software contains a number of titles, from Creative Writing to Egyptians. In each one there are a number of backgrounds, characters and props that pupils drag onto the stage to create scenes. They can add speech/thought bubbles and text boxes to tell the story. Once finished, they can save the story as a movie file, or print it out. This s quite expensive software, but it proved to be very motivating for the students.

The second piece of software was Comic Life, which I have written about previously here. The students sourced photos from the internet, and took extras using digital cameras. They could then add these to their own comic strip and add dialogue. This software is relatively cheap, and can be used for so many different projects.

The final software we used was Photostory, which is free! Students uploaded photos on a particular subject, and added effects, transitions, movement, text and a soundtrack. Finally they published the story to play as a Windows Media file.

All three pieces of software were excellent for engaging the students, regardless of their level. They were easy to use, and the final outcomes were very successful. They are ideal packages for working on literacy skills across all age groups and abilities, and the content can be relevant to their interests.

Image manipulation and fun stuff with photos

You no longer need to buy expensive photo editing software to do creative things with your images. Go to the following sites instead:

Wiredness

This is a very simple site. Upload your image to the page and you can resize, crop, add text and add a number of effects, then save back to your documents.

Phixr

You need to sign in (which is free) to this site. It does similar things to Wiredness, but you can also add speech bubbles, merge photos and add a few more effects.

fd’s Flickr Toys

This site has a large number of ideas for things to do with your images, for example:

1. Make a calendar.
2. Use the Warholizer.
3. Create trading cards.
4. Create a Hockney-inspired photo montage.
5. Make your own magazine cover.