My story, Montreal in March (working title), tells the tale of a road trip. I would use the story to introduce an activity where students plan and budget for a trip.
The tools I used in authoring my story (Google Maps, Flickr and Picasa), met the basic SECTIONS criteria (not blocked by school-board filters, easy-to-use, reliable, and free), that eliminated some of the other tools. In addition, I chose Google Maps because the road trip is naturally suited to a story map, and because students could use a tool such a Google Maps to work on, and present their assignment. Flickr is a large repository of photos, searchable by keyword, and the search results can be filtered by permissions associated with the photos. I used one of my own photos for the story, and chose Picasa as the hosting site, in order to gain some familiarity with another image repository. An interesting feature of all of these tools is their interactive nature. Interested in what the silver dome in the photo is? “Search nearby”, and connect to the history of the Bonsecours market. Want to know what the countryside around Montreal ‘really’ looks like? Go to streetview. Viewers can also comment on map presentations and photos.
How did the choice of tool affect how I told the story? The story (based on an actual incident) existed initially as a verbal story – told with much embellishment. In its initial written form, it was much shorter than the verbal tale. As I found photos to support the story, the text become even shorter. However, we know that ‘every picture tells a story’ – so in a sense the story expanded, at the same time that it became shorter.
At this moment, I feel that I should cut about a third of the story – but I don’t have the heart to! Maybe I will, by Sunday night.