Blurb Booksmart

The Title sounds like I am going to share some really high tech information, doesn't it?

Well, I may....

I found a website for photobooks that really met all of my needs (trust me, that is hard to do for an avid scrapbooker). I know that there are a lot of services out there now that offer photo book services with prices ranging from fair to one where you would expect each page to be made of gold. Usually, you get what you pay for, but Blurb may be the solution.

Blurb is a photo book building software that you download on your computer to create photo books. You can upload photos to the website and share them with other Blurb members, as you can do with other photo book websites, but you can also take your photos directly from Flickr, Picassa, and SmugMug right into your photobook. You can also seemlesssly integrate photos from your iPhoto library. You can also collaborate on the building of a Groupbook using the Blurg website as a media. How neat is that! This could mean so may different uses for print, both in education and the corporate world. I get excited just thinking of the different possible uses it could have for my high school and the neat projects that you could have-- a collaborative yearbook that it accessible online, history book for class or of the high school, poetry publications, cookbooks for home economics, story books for child pyschology classes...


But for me, the best part was having the freedom of not being held to the pre-set designs and templates, but still have the software to help you easily build a custom book.

Check it out:
Blurb

Photo Story 3 for Windows

What is Photo Story? Photo Story is software, which you can download FREE from Microsoft, that will enable you to tell a story with your digital photographs. It is simple and easy to use and you can literally create your first Photo Story in about 10 minutes, replete with photo captions and music! It is as easy as 1-2-3. First, you download the software from the following web address http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=92755126-a008-49b3-b3f4-6f33852af9c1&DisplayLang=en . After you download (or run) the software, simply accept the defaults and the program is installed and ready to use. When you first open Photo Story, Begin a New Story is the default so click on Next and the next screen will prompt you to import your pictures. You will then browse for your pictures on your pc. It will then ask you if you want to remove the black borders from your pictures, which I recommend. You can click next and then you will have an option of adding titles to your picture, the placement of those titles, and the color and size of the font (so the words don’t get lost on the page). Go through all of your slides, and when complete, click next and you will be given the option to narrate your pictures. Click next and you can create music (music already there by Mozart, Beethoven, 80’s music, etc) or you can select music that you already have on your pc. Pick the music you want and your Photostory is complete. You can then chose to save your project to play back on your pc, email it to someone, or, with special software, make a dvd of your photo story. There are also great, advanced features like transitions from slide to slide that you can play with and learn as you go in addition the ability to add audio to your slides. As with any Microsoft product, there are great tutorials you can go through to learn this simple, fun product.

It’s fast, easy, and fun! Try it!

Storytelling game - adaptation

When reading over one of the postings on storytelling, I read the familiar opening "Once upon a time." This was not a terribly surprising phrase to stumble upon, but it reminded me of a card game with the same title. The game is now more than ten years old, but the methodology is timeless. And my remembering it is, perhaps, timely for a discussion of group storytelling as a mode of learning. From the Atlas website:

Once Upon a Time
The Storytelling Card Game

Named to GAMES Magazine's Best Family Card Game section in 1997, Once Upon a Time is a game the entire family will enjoy. The players create a story together, using cards that show typical elements from fairy tales. One player is the Storyteller, and creates a story using the ingredients on her cards. She tries to guide the plot towards her own ending. The other players try to use cards to interrupt her and become the new Storyteller. The winner is the first player to play out all her cards and end with her Happy Ever After card!

I have played this game and it is great fun. This concept of storytelling is, of course, not at all new. To make it relevant to e-learning I have been kicking around ideas for possibly making digital "cards" that would have story elements pertaining to whatever the subject matter is for a given lesson. Any suggestions?

And yes, last name is D, but I apparently was mixed up. Besides I wanted to post this anyway!

Storytelling Guidelines - Resources

Once Upon a Time

The following are the wonderful resources that I used in my Centra presentation about Storytelling:

http://www.21centuryconnections.com/node/562

http://www.storycenter.org/cookbook.pdf

http://noisebetweenstations.com/personal/weblogs/?p=2211

http://www.jakesonline.org/photostory.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storytelling

http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2007/09/storytelling_the_key_to_making.html

http://www.aaronshep.com/storytelling/Tips.html

http://www.artsedge.org/content/2347

http://competitivevoice.blogspot.com/2006/06/fundamentals-of-digital-storytelling.html

http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu

http://www.stevedenning.com/Main_types_story.html

Digital Story Telling Resources

As requested - here are the links to the resources on digital storytelling from my recent presentation:

I suggest starting here - as all the other links are posed in my delicious collection as well as many others:

http://delicious.com/JennyKay5/digitalstorytelling
(my delicious links on digital storytelling)

http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/mathematics.html
(educational uses for digital storytelling)

http://tech-head.com/dstory.htm
(links to key digital storytelling sites)

http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/learnshops/digital/examples.php
(other cool examples of digital video stories with voiceover)