Saturday, September 27, 2008

Creating a Personal Montage

Exploring Web 2.0 can lead you down roads you didn't expect. I was on YouTube, just looking at a few montages created by people I got to know through my Flickr group, and I saw the little button on the One True Media sign that said "Create Your Own", and so I just had to try it (I am an impulsive Teacher Librarian after all!). An hour later, and I'm still playing with it, adding photos of the boys and choosing background music. I liked the idea of adding text, but it is a premium feature and costs about $39 a year. I'm not that ready to commit, so I made the basic montage. I'm going to try to add it here, but please keep in mind that I didn't have much luck with embedding my Flickr slideshow. I'm crossing my virtual fingers here!


View this montage created at One True Media


I think this site would be very useful in the classroom. We could create montages of fieldtrips, and if the text did not cost money to add, or if I invested, the students could use it to recount the events of our trip. Hopefully focusing on what was learned, and not just the social side of an outing, though that may have a place in building a classroom community that we can share beyond the walls of said classroom. Hmm, that is more photo food for thought.


I imagine this site could be used across the grades as well--I would have easily used it when I taught Kindergarten to record activities such as show and share, using building blocks, baking, book making, finger-painting, puzzle making, just about anything. In middle years I would have used it to record volunteer endeavours such as working for the food bank, cleaning a green space, visiting a nursing home.


What I think would be really interesting, would be to ask the students how it would be best used in the classroom. Especially for those of us who have worked or are working in school divisions that restrict access to such sites. Having students debate the educational virtues of such sites and writing persuasive letters to the administration and school board might be a very useful activity indeed!

7 comments:

Jo-Anne Gibson said...

Carol,
I hadn't seen the "One True Media" button. I would just have assumed that I would have to put a movie together first on something like Movie Maker and then post it but this looks like it works great.

As soon as I saw your video, I could immediately see how you could use it in class to document events. Did you have trouble finding copyright free music as an Mp3? I found that difficult when I was trying to put together a video like this using Movie Maker.

Jo-Anne

Carol N. said...

Thanks Jo-Anne--this was an easy site to navigate and the music was right there to choose from (you could narrow the music down by genre which I appreciated). Some of it was considered "premium", so the choices were somewhat limited for doing it on the cheaper side. I was assuming that copyright was covered--hope so anyway!

Joanne said...

This was a great video Carol. You will probably like VoiceThreads when we get to that section of the course because you can combine photos/illustrations with audio (e.g. voice) so that kids could narrate their own videos.

BTW, you have the CUTEST boys! I love the picture of your littlest guy in the exersaucer (sp?)--he is adorable and looked quite content to be hanging out watching the action!

Carol said...

Carol,

I agree with Joanne, your boys are cute! As a music teacher I loved the little one playing on the drum, eventually it will be time for a real set!!

Your video reminds me of Photo Story - have you used this free software? It makes digital pictures look like a video. I use it to produce school slideshows.

carol t

Jo-Anne Gibson said...

Carol T,
You mention Photo Story which I've never tried. Have you tried Movie Maker? We use this at school all the time. I wonder how they compare.

Jo-Anne

Carol said...

I haven't used movie maker for years. Photo Story (Microsoft) is very easy to use! We use this one at school all time. I just never think to use Movie Maker.

carol t

Carol N. said...

Okay, Joanne, Jo-Anne, and Carol T: Thanks for your suggestions, now I'm really excited to try out the movie making sites you mentioned. I want to experiment with my 7 year old and see which one is easiest for someone his age to navigate through, create and share. We'll see what happens!