Nicholas Kapetanis's List: Multimedia

Blabberize is a fun tool for the kids to produce a presentation. You download any photo to the site and then create a mouth on the photo. Then the site has you do a voice over (I have my kids to a short research paper and the photo has to have something to do with their research) they record a reading of their research project. The site put the picture the mouth and the reading together and the photo' s mouth actually moves to the voice of the students. Check it out.

Students can make their own movies using personal pictures or images found on the internet.

Photo Story 3 includes features that enable you to create a slideshow with your digital pictures, edit your pictures, create your story with original music, add narration, and share them with your family and friends.

My students used this tool to summarize their understanding of the events of the French Revolution. I provided links to a number of French Revolution-related images and gave them a basic tutorial of the tool (which I had played with for about 20 minutes before giving the demo). From there the students put together short comic books, complete with voice bubbles and other text.

For this project students had to first read a number of poems written by World War I soldiers and select one. Next they reviewed hundreds of images from WWI from a list of image sites I provided them. They were specifically looking for visuals that connected to the imagery described in their poem. Once they had their images, they set up an account at Jumpcut.com (owned by Yahoo so you need a Yahoo login). Then they could import their photos and add their poem to the images.

This is a really interesting site. It allows students to use a screen like a canvas and add voice to what they are describing. My students really liked the ability to add voice to an explanation of a topic.