Here’s my digital story about our camping trip to Washington last year:

I actually found this experience pretty enjoyable once I had chosen which platform I was going to use.  I knew which pictures I wanted to use and had an idea that I wanted to include the song as well so PhotoPeach seemed to fit the bill.  I found PhotoPeach to be very easy to use and like how the finished product turned out.  There aren’t a lot of steps to the creation of the slide show so it’s pretty easy.  I’m always a little uneasy about trying out new programs because I always feel like I’m going in without a clue.  I had browsed a large number of the programs before I settled on PhotoPeach.  This was the right choice for me because it was relatively idiot proof (which is always good in my case).

I can definitely see using a tool like PhotoPeach in my classes.   For example, in my Social Studies 11 class I have a living standards assignment where students have to compare and contrast a developing country with a developed country.  I’ve actually got this assignment loaded into my Moodle shell for this course.  I would love to adapt the assignment so that the students could present their findings through a program like PhotoPeach.  It would allow them to spend more time researching their countries as well as gaining a more visual understanding of the differences between the two.

I could also use this type of program to get the students to look at the four major Canadian battles of WW1 for the history section of the course (Ypres, Somme, Vimy Ridge, and Passchendaele for all you trivia buffs).  I can hear “The Maple Leaf Forever” on bagpipes accompanying their presentations already.  The visual aspect of this type of activity I think could help the students gain a better understanding of the material we’re covering.  The thought of using this has got me feeling pretty motivated for September.

This type of activity is very constructivist which is something I think a lot of our students (particularly at the high school level) could use more of.  As well, I think that the students would surprise me in their approach to the assignment.  There would certainly be more variety in the type of presentations rather than have them all hand in a paper on the same topic.  I think the fact that the students would have more creative license with a project like this would engage them more.  When they are more engaged they are more likely to learn more and be able to apply that learning.  Particularly in Social Studies, what we are doing is relating stories that happened in the past.  A tool like this could help the students construct their own understanding of the stories of the past I really see value in using these tools in the classroom.

References

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 12,  2009 http://www.educause.edu/ER/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume42/DrMashuporWhyEducatorsShouldLe/161747