Recently I came into possession of a bunch of great pictures which were taken during my trip to Italy (arranged by my daughter who lives there), and I decided to kill two birds with one stone - share the images with you and try the emaze tool for making my presentation.
emaze is a great free online tool for creating presentations as well as digital stories. It lets you upload pictures, videos, add text and shapes to your canvas to get a nice linear slide presentation. It is best viewed on full screen which allows you to hide the navigation buttons at the bottom of the page and use the computer keys instead.
It took me a couple of days to complete my first emaze presentation, not because it was hard work but because I did a lot of other stuff in between.
emaze is easy to use, it does not have tons of complicated formatting tools to employ, but there are some really helpful features that make the creative process pleasant. While working on your slides, pay attention to the tiny pale markings on your canvas which indicate the borders of your presentation window. Also it is very helpful to preview your slides on the left-hand panel as you work on your presentation.
The author can also invite other people to collaborate on the presentation which is especially great for student projects.
Glogster is a multimedia tool which we all inevitably set about using - sooner or later. I did it later. I am glad Glogster came to my mind when I was trying to make up a CLIL lesson combining geography, history, music and English, namely Liverpool and the Beatles.
Glogster lets you put all the lesson components in one place - an interactive poster - which you display on the screen and show your students the lesson in a nutshell.
How to use this glog?
Take your time watching the video about Liverpool with your students.
Ask them to do the worksheet about the video, discuss their answers.
See the pictures of Liverpool and tell your students what YOU liked about the city when you visited it.
Read the piece of text about the Beatles craze and discuss it.
Watch the Beatles video.
Ask them what they know about the Beatles, give them some additional information.
At the end, ask your students to give feedback about the lesson and evaluate the digital poster you made for them.
Ask for volunteers who could make a glog for the next topic.
Voilà!
Download the worksheet to use with the video about Liverpool. Worksheet
Finally I've got to making my first story on Storybird which I had been planning to do for a while. Easter break gave me this chance and I did not get disappointed. Working on the story got my creative juices flowing and though I realized I can hardly be an author who writes perfect stories in English, I managed to build my first tale. Here it is.
What I like on Storybird is the amazing, fantastic and awesome artwork offered to the writers. The pictures are varied in colour, theme, characters, atmosphere, style etc. I went through tons of images and loved so many of them that my initial problem was to choose the most attractive ones for my first story.
But, as I was trying to decide on which pictures I would be going to use, I realized that it is not us who decide on the idea of the story but the pictures which lead us where they want, and we just have to follow them.
For a story you get an assortment of pictures and you can choose only from them, no possibility of adding images from another bunch or replacing them. It may be considered a drawback if you do not like any restrictions but such are the conditions on Storybird - take it or leave it.
If you are going to use Storybird with your students, they will probably be grateful that they are offered a ready-made set of pictures which certainly makes it easier to decide on what to use. You may start with a very short story, no longer than 2-3 pages to show the students the way it is done and get the knack of digital storytelling. I am sure they will take to it eventually and create original, witty and sparkling stories.
Meanwhile, I have composed another story, and while I am now waiting for it to be approved by the site administrators, I am asking myself - has Storybird got me enchanted?
