ICT Tip: Ask your students to create digital slideshows quickly and easily with Photo Story!

This ICT tip could be best applied to the following subjects:

Quick overview: A free application that allows your students to create a digital sideshow with copyright free music and their own digital photos.

What does it do? Photo Story allows you or your students to easily create a “digital slideshow” out of images taken with a digital camera or images from the Internet. Photo Story (www.tinyurl.com/4f869) can even generate copyright free music for the slideshow, no musical talent necessary! Due to popularity of this ICT application, I’ve created an updated video tutorial (September 2009) that explains how to use this software step-by-step, please see the video below.

How can it be used in the classroom? Nancy Peterson from the Pontiac Adult Education and Vocational Training Centre (WQSB) showed me how she used Photo Story in conjunction with a class field trip.  Her class took digital pictures during a “sugaring off” field trip and once they got back to the classroom, they pooled together all their digital images and imported them into Photo Story. The students then took turns adding their own vocal narration for each slide. Once complete, they exported the digital slide show as a PC movie file. Nancy was really impressed with the results and so was I!

Video Tutorial: In order to explain step-by-step how a Photostory is created, I’ve created an on-line video tutorial which can be viewed below:

Technical note: Photo Story is a desktop application. This means in order to use Photo Story, it must be downloaded and installed locally on a Windows computer.  If you do not know how (or have the rights) to install software in your computer lab, you can ask for help from your IT department. The digital slideshow files that Photostory 3.0 produces (.WMV files) can be played on any Windows computer, even if Photo Story is not installed.

SMARTBoard: Using the text tool with the SMART Notebook software

This ICT tip could be best applied to the following subjects:

Quick overview: An overview of the SMART Notebook text tool. Basic technique.

How can it be used in the classroom: If you prepare SMART Notebook lessons on a home or school computer without a SMARTBoard connected to it, you should familiarize yourself with the text tool. The text tool is needed when you are preparing your lessons in advance and don’t have access to the physical SMARTBoard pens to create handwritten text in your lessons. The following video also contains some useful tips for math and science teachers using the text tool.

Video Tutorial: To see an on-line video of how to use the text tool, please click the large play button below:

ICT Tip: The Doodle website can help your students plan group projects

This ICT tip could be best applied to the following subjects:

Quick overview: Doodle (www.doodle.com) can be used by a group of students (or a teacher) to create out a simple poll for classmates to vote on. Free, easy to use, and quick. No registration required.

How does it work: The way the Doodle website works is that one author (i.e – the group leader or teacher) creates a simple poll that others can vote on.  The author of the poll obtains a web link that he or she can paste into an e-mail to send to other students so that they can cast their vote.  For each e-mail recipient, it literally takes seconds to submit a vote. Doodle can be used by students to determine a majority vote for a project theme, most convenient time to work together, and so on.. The selection with the most votes wins. Votes are NOT anonymous. (Source: Claudine Turnbull, RECIT FGA)

Video Tutorial: To see a step-by-step video of how to create a poll in Doodle, please click the large play button below:

ICT Tip: Google News Timeline website – A new way to search the past!

This ICT tip could be best applied to the following subjects:

Quick overview: A website that allows your students to search for specific keywords (i.e – people, places, events, quotes) in old newspapers and magazines. Think of searchable digital microfiche, updated for the web, and free!

How does it work? The Google News Timeline website (newstimeline.googlelabs.com) displays search results in a chronological, graphical timeline. The search history can be set to display days, weeks, months, years, or even decades. In fact, some archived newspapers go back as far as the early 1800’s!  For more recent decades, Google News Timeline will search through more contemporary news sources (web, wikipedia) but it can be disabled in your search preferences, if desired.  

How can it be used in the classroom: While many of our students tend to rely on Wikipedia for their historical research (not always a good thing) they could be instead encouraged to use Google Timeline to look through archived print media. Google News Timeline is like visiting the library all over again.. a truly fascinating site, definitely worth a look! (Source: Susan van Gelder, LEARN)

Video Tutorial: To see an on-line video overview of how the Google News Timeline site works, click the large play button below:

Note: If you are interested in a website that will allow your students to read through current newspapers, please consult my other ICT Blog posting featuring the Newseum website.

google news timeline is a web application that organizes search results chronologically. It allows users to view news and other data sources on a browsable, graphical timeline. Available data sources include recent and historical news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts, sports scores, and information about various types of media, like music albums and movies.