Tools and Ideas for Telling Stories With Pictures
This is an excerpt from this week’s newsletter. Subscribers to the Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week got a PDF that contained additional resources.
Over the years I’ve found that using pictures helps a lot of students get started on crafting stories. In some cases I’ve had students create collages to represent elements of a story. In other cases I’ve had them choose five pictures and write two hundred words about each. Being asked to write two hundred words about five pictures feels a lot less daunting than being asked to write one thousand words in one shot.
Here are some of my favorite tools for students to use to create image-based stories.
Talking Pictures
ChatterPix Kids is one of my favorite digital storytelling apps for elementary school students to use. The free app is available in an iPad form and in an Android form. To use the app students simply open it on their iPads or Android devices and then take a picture. Once they’ve taken a picture students draw a mouth on their pictures. With the mouth in place students then record themselves talking for up to thirty seconds. The recording is then added to the picture and saved as a video on the students’ iPads or Android devices. Tutorials on how to use both versions of the app can be seen here.
Picture Yourself in Front of Any Landmark
There are many free tools for removing the background from any image that you own. Use these tools to quickly remove the background from an image of yourself. Once the background is removed you can take the image of yourself and layer it over a new background image. Canva has this as a built-in feature as does PowerPoint. The process in Canva is outlined in this video. The process of using PowerPoint to remove and replace image backgrounds is outlined in this video.
Alphabet Picture Books
Alphabet Organizer is a great little tool from Read Write Think that students can use to create alphabet charts and books. The idea behind Alphabet Organizer is to help students make visual connections between letters of the alphabet and the first letter of common words. This short video demonstrates how to use Alphabet Organizer.
50 Tech Tuesday Tips and Upcoming Webinars!
Are you a tech coach who has to run a workshop this summer? If so, my eBook 50 Tech Tuesday Tips is for you! Or if you’d like me to run a workshop or webinar for you, send me an email at richard (at) byrne.media and let’s talk.
I am going to host a series of professional development webinars in July and August. I’ll be announcing the schedule soon. Add your name to this list to be notified when enrollment opens.