Photohistory, a free software to make academic videos to languages class with your pictures.

 

I. INTRODUCTION: (history, definition and  purpose)  

If you are a language teacher, you should know the importance of engaging students in learning activities, for this reason it is necessary to look for a  good tool to teach, where you can involve all students in their learning.

I recommend Photo Story because it is a free application designed by the Microsoft Company. According to wikipidia.org, photo story was developed to create multimedia movies from digital photos while enjoy showing and telling presentations using your digital photos.

In the tutorial created by Microsoft company, we can see how  this program is describe as a way for editing pictures, adding subtitles, narrations and stories to read; in addition you could put different sound, music and audios formats in different languages.

If you think that it is complicated, do not worry, you do not need to be a expert computer operator. Just with a single click as you can touch-up, crop, or rotate pictures easily, the only thing that you need is imagination to make a good slideshow. Photo Story provides the perfect alternative to make  pedagogic video class projects  with high emotional content that keep students' interest and concentration in the class topics.


II. CHARACTERISTICS:

Before you start building your digital story, you will want to make sure you have all your pieces where you can access them: digital photos, narrations and format audios that you would like to add to your project,  you have to preparated all the items beforehand. 

Photo story is a good tool to teach foreign languages because it has the capacity of joining image, sound and writing in only one presentation in a few steps:

Firstly capture your class memories with your camera, secondly import your digital photos to the program in your pc, later edit the images and save the project, add the narration and sound, thirdly save your movie and finally share your project with your students.

This product allows students to record their voice over pictures. It enables the students to create a video with pictures that corresponds to their recorded voice. This format could be compared to an audio form of flashcards. While using this program, students are required to come up with a suitable title, introduction and an entire composition matching the selected pictures and their chosen topics in class.

Microsoft photo story tutorial explains how you can navigate forward and backward in a 5-step process at any time giving you unlimited flexibility while building your digital story.The best of all is that you do not need to be expert video editor  and you can keep your work in a video CD or free download in to DVD.   

TOOLS:

First begin to design your idea of video project, then take the photos with a photographic digital camera or a scanner to digitalize your photography in JPEG or JPG format, the following is a computer with a windows platform and photo story installed, and finally these are the items you will need to prepare beforehand:

-Subtitles:  you can write down all kind of texts like your notes, translations of songs, narrations and stories.

- Images: you need to be sure that all pictures are digitized and in the jpg or jpeg format. You can change your image with basic edits and adjustments like red-eye reduction, color     

correction, zoom, between others. 

- Sound: in the tutorial of Photo Story by Microsoft you can look how import the: MP3, WAV or WMA (Windows Media Audio) to add to your class project. If you have your music on a CD, you will need to rip it into one of these formats”. As well can you attach voice narration since a microphone that plugs into a computer.


III. COMMENTARIES: 


Limitations

Photo Story is a free program but it is not officially supported by Microsoft on the Windows Vista platform; you may import until 200 pictures and with a maximum size of 1024 x 1280.

Written by 

Fredy Salazar