Ed in ETEC

Roxio PhotoShow – My Way of Telling a Story

I have chosen to use Roxio PhotoShow to tell my digital story of my reflections upon visiting Alaska the first week of July. For a view of the PhotoShow, you can click onto here (if you are not viewing the show from above). During the trip, I had a chance to witness some of the majestic beauties of the State of Alaska. Through the conversations of the people working in the tourist industry in Alaska, I could feel a deep sense of appreciation towards that scenic beauty. At the same time, many of them expressed their concerns over the human impact on nature – some even felt that this beauty would be destroyed by the continued exploitation humans have towards the environment. It is under this backdrop that I have decided to create my digital story this way.

Why was this the right tool for you to use to tell your story? Explain how you purposefully selected your tool.

Before settling on Roxio PhotoShow, I looked at the materials that I have at hand to produce the story. During my Alaskan trip, I have taken a substantial amount of videos on my hand cam-corder. I have taken a lot of pictures with my digital camera. I have picked up brochures, pamphlets, and other print materials that describe the places I have visited. Naturally, a tool that would allow me to incorporate video and graphics (pictures) would be ideal. However, upon reviewing my videos, I notice that the quality of most clips were mediocre at best. Unwanted sounds also frequented the videos (e.g. my wife asking me to pass a bottle of water to her has no educational value), so the video clips I have are rendered useless for this project.

With only pictures in my hands now, a slideshow presentation seems to make sense. I have used Goggle’s Picasa tool in the past to share photos with family and friends, so that seemed to be the most natural tool to use. However, I also understand very well the limitation of Picasa – besides adding captions, there is little that the program can do. Through looking at Levine’s website, I find Roxio PhotoShow, and the descriptor appeared to be fairly promising. I tried using Roxio to create a little slide show using the first day’s pictures of my Alaskan trip to show my family and friends, and the tool was user friendly. The final product, though not spectacular, was noticeably better than the simple slide shows I can create using Picasa. I therefore decided to use this tool to tell my digital story.

Describe how a story-telling approach would work within a course that you teach using sound pedagogical arguments.

Story-telling has been an assessment tool I have been using in my classes to tap into the multiple intelligence aspect of assessment. A good number of my students, I find, do not perform very well on summative tests, but through class interactions, have demonstrated their abilities to grasp the curriculum. Finding a way to allow them to demonstrate that understanding has been a paramount objective in my assessment strategies. Story-telling is one of the means where students can use creative means (e.g. video, drama, art, etc.) to demonstrate their knowledge of the course materials. In the past, I have asked my science students to use story-telling to demonstrate their understanding towards the rock cycle, the reproductive cycles of various plants, among many other topics. I find story-telling particularly effective when students need to demonstrate their understanding of a concept that involves multiple steps and transitions. Through the use of creative means, students often create their own analogy, and that assists greatly in them remembering these sometimes very difficult-to-memorize concepts.

As technology advances and evolves, the method of story-telling can take on a new dimension that taps into another area of a student’s expertise. Many students have been using various online tools to create digital artefacts to be shared among friends and family. A digital story assignment would allow students to do the same. To name a particular example, I can think of the ecology unit in the new science 10 curriculum. Students can be asked to create a digital story to demonstrate their understanding of the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, etc. In taking on this assignment, a student would assume the role of a particle, and would trace the particle’s journey as it runs through different steps within that ecological cycle. Students can use pictures, incorporate their own sound bites, and so on.

If the assignment is expanded to be used as a group assignment, then the collaborative aspect discussed by Lamb (2007) would also kick in. Specifically, Lam mentions that, currently, “millions of bloggers were gleefully sharing their materials and forming fluid communities of interest without central coordination or organizational incentives. The practices were easy to adopt, the benefits were immediate, and there was fun to be had.” While students working in small groups do not exactly fit the vast circle of a learning community, it still offers collaboration and cooperation in the production of this digital story. In using the ecology assignment as an example, once again, students can divide their work, with some being responsible for the photography, some being responsible for the research for the textual content to be used in captions, and others being responsible for the production of the actual digital story. The most important piece for this assignment is that, each student can participate in something that he/she is good at, and that empowers the interests in learning.

Other Reflections

Why did you choose this particular tool?

I have chosen Roxio PhotoShow because it offers a very user-friendly interface to operate. Students probably do not require instructions to learn how to use this simple presentation tool. Where instructions are needed, a concrete, simple, easy-to-follow instruction is on the screen (e.g. the instruction to teach you how to move the location of the caption). The tool also has some add-on features (such as adding “bubbles” where one can insert a conversation or thought, among others) to enhance the “fun” aspect of the story-building process.

How did the tool impact the manner in which you told your story?

Roxio PhotoShow, at the free version level, is somewhat limited in what it can do. (For a comparison of the differences in features between a free and a paid account, click on the “features” button in Roxio PhotoShow’s website: http://www.photoshow.com/home/start) Using the free version, I cannot upload any video clips, nor sound clips created on my own. The add-on materials I can throw in are also very limited (e.g. only 8 stickers compared to the 520 on a paid account). As a result, the story I create would have to rely heavily on images and my creativity in writing good captions.

How might you use such tools in your own teaching to produce materials for students?

Because of its limitations and the low variety in features; and, most importantly, the fact that a PhotoShow created using the free account would only remain active for 30 days, I do not see myself using Roxio PhotoShow to create my teaching materials. For leisure purposes (such as sharing family photos), the 30-day limit works (who goes back to the same slide show of a family member 6 months from the time it was first published?), but for teaching materials that an educator needs to re-use (with modifications and updates), this does not work.

How might students be given access to the same authoring tools?

Students who sign up for a free account would have the same access as an instructor signing up for a free account. All the teacher needs to do is to give the web address to the students, and students can begin building their own digital story online. When the assignment is completed, an e-mail link will be e-mailed to the students – the students can e-mail that link to the instructor and other students, or publish that link in a course discussion forum/weblog (should these features be available in a course).

What kind of impact would you expect to see in your students in terms of motivation, creativity, or any other characteristics?

Students would initially be quite interested in creating a digital story using Roxio PhotoShow. The added features such as “stickers” would keep them interested for a short period of time. The tool also contains sufficient features to allow students to exercise their creativity somewhat. However, as I have mentioned before, due to the free account’s limitations, students probably would quickly grow tired of the limited features available. I can also envision the teacher growing tired of seeing the same borders, sounds, and stickers from every student as well.

Reference:
Lamb, B. (2007). Dr. Mashup; or, Why Educators Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Remix. EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 42, no. 4 (July/August 2007): 12–25. Accessed online July 14 2009 http://www.educause.edu/ER/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume42/DrMashuporWhyEducatorsShouldLe/161747

Alan Levine. (2007). “50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story.” Accessed July 12 2009. http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools