Storytelling

Slideshows have become an integral part of most classrooms as a way to deliver information in a multimedia format. PowerPoint slideshows have become commonplace- and, in many cases, stale and irrelevant. However, PowerPoint lacks the media-rich features to truly motivate the digital natives that we teach today. Try these in place of your next slideshow- or better yet, challenge students to create their own... media type="custom" key="5304907" align="right"

Animotomedia type="custom" key="7231643" align="right"
This site is so awesome! You upload your photos (or use your online photos from Flickr, etc.), upload your own music or select from their library (great collection) and let their servers do all the work rendering a great video mix. The effects and transitions are professional Hollywood-type effects! Notice for my sample movie that I created title slides in PowerPoint then saved the slides as .jpg files.

The free version creates a "quick mix" about 30 seconds in length- about 15 images can be displayed. For $30/year or $3/video, you can create full-length videos and download them to your computer (and burn DVD's). ** Update: The site will now allow educators FREE access to premium membership for you and your students! ** Get more information here.

Download this file for practice files:

=MessageHop= This site touts itself as "A fast and fun way to create animated messages for loved ones. " I can only describe it as a vertically linear slideshow with photos and animated text. Take a look for yourself: http://www.messagehop.com/message/#/?hop=VynG9a

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You can navigate through the message manually (especially if it goes too fast). Using it is simple:
 * No registration or accounts required (or available)
 * Edit an existing message or build a new one
 * Add photos
 * Add text
 * Add animations to text
 * Share the URL

The site does not give you the embed code. I was able to embed the one above with this iframe HTML code. Just replace the code in red to suit your own needs.

MessageHop

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OneTrueMedia
Description from their website: Somebody's going to look like a creative genius in a few minutes (hint: it's you). It's just so simple to mix your video and photos with our fresh, stylish effects to create wow-worthy Video Montages.


 * Registration required
 * Built-in music library
 * Includes a title generator

PhotoPeachmedia type="custom" key="5147039" align="right"
This great site allows you to display your images in two different modes. The "Story" mode as shown here allows you to add captions, music, and quiz questions to your images.

The "Spiral" mode displays images only in a great interface. Click to see Spiral Example.

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Slideroll
This may be the Cadillac of online presentation generators. Think of this tool as a simplified Windows Photo Story equivalent (hear that Mac users?). Here you can upload images or import them from your Flickr account. You may then sequence the images, insert captions, add pan & zoom effects, add music from their eclectic collection, add links to websites, create text slides on the fly, overlap images to create smooth cross-dissolve transitions. Finally, you can publish your show and get either the code to embed the show into your blog/wiki or get the link to send to others.

You can link to the same slideshow. See it here.

Registration is required and email is verified. Passwords must be at least 8 characters! You can continue using Slideroll without immediately verifying the email address.