Picking The Best From The Bunch

Alan Levine's 50 Web 2.0 Ways To Tell A Story cleverly goes through 50 different applications using the same 1 minute story which in turn enables teachers to decide which end product they think is best suited for a particular presentation. Having played about with slideshare and YouTube to create stories with children it looks like Alan has taken the hard work away from my chore of finding other suitable presentation tools for next session. Below is my slant on each one and where, who and how I would implement the tools:

1. YouTube

Although I have used this to present a set of primary 3 Mummy Movies the children did not go through the uploading process. At the present I would teach children from primary 5 (aged 9) upwards to use this tool to present their work.

2. Bubbleshare

Pictures and text in a slideshow presentation. This is easier to use than YouTube as children can upload pictures immediately to Bubbleshare and place captions and 30 second audio for each slide.

3. Fabrik

A animated slideshow of pictures with no audio. No benefit to creating an account if you have Bubbleshare as this creates slideshows with the option of audio.

4. ImageLoop

A fancy picture and text slideshow. I liked how the text appeared in a nice tidy transparent box on top of picture. This would be good to use with primary 4 - 5 children to create simple presentations.

5. One True Media

Very creative templates that will appeal to children. Audio can be uploaded from file thus allowing the use of Audacity prior to uploading. There is a place for using this in our bear exchanges where the children currently use slide.com to upload their pictures and create eye-catching slideshows.

6. RockYou

A trendy slideshow that will certainly appeal to the older children with the ability to upload images, video, music and enter captions. This looks like it could be used with our RadioHigh podcasts to bring the shows to life with animation. Older children could also use this for a presentation accompanied by music they create using Dance E-jay.

7. Slide.Com

This is similar to One True Media giving lots of trendy templates to host the slide show and the use of captions. The only downside is it does not take audio directly or uploaded but who says everything should have sound! Children in primary 3 enjoy using this to present their pictures of their bear adventures.

8. SlideFlickr

A simple slideshow created from pictures in Flickr account. Fine for a simple presentation but do believe the others provide better options.

9. SlideRoll

Another slideshow tool that would not be required if you have any of the above.

10. Dandelife

Best described as a time-line that can have text or images. I like this for two reasons: one children can keep a record of events through pictures or even the whole school year can be placed on here recording events on the time-line, the other method would be children using this to create time-lines for a history project. This I will use over the year to map our school life making it accessible to children and parents. I do like the use of Dandelife to create a time-line of Distant Education.


11. VoiceThread

An excellent presentation tool that will certainly be used for telling stories with children throughout the school. I like the ability to leave comments by text or audio using your own account which would then be an excellent communication tool similar to a blog but more visual. This is also similar to voki which provide avatars and the comments are also avatars too.

12. Flektor

As a primary teacher this tool is out as you have to be fourteen years and over to use.


13. ToonDoo

This is definitely not for use with long stories as it only has room for a very short comic strip. Young children will enjoy this tool where they can choose from a range of characters and objects etc to create a simple comic strip. I will try this out but with young children and gage the benefits afterwards as still not convinced this is what I want to implement into my curriculum.

14. Tabblo

This is like an electronic scrapbook with captions. Initially I thought this would be good for creating posters but feel that it is not worth the effort to teach the children to use this if they can't see it directly on their social areas.

15. GoogleMaps

I do not really think this tool can be used to tell a story as the viewer does not know what sequence to take. Apart from using it as the obvious to represent locations with images and text it could be used as a Geography/Language exercise where the first location has a specific icon to click on to get started with a geographical clue to where to click next. Children can then click on specific locations and try to create a story line resulting in a fun map finding exercise.

16. Flickr Story Telling In 5 Frames

The benefits of using this seems to be more technical than language based that I do not think it would be beneficial to use. If to be used a simple five picture story line for young children why not just place the pictures in a blog and use the comments area?

17. Flickr 6 Word Caption

I am sure many younger children could create six words or less for a picture but do they need all the technical knowledge to get into the Internet, sign in to Flickr etc when this can be done using more child-friendly tools. Another one of Flickr's tools to be left on the shelf.

18. Flicktion

Fliction allows you to write a story to accompany a picture, why not just use a blog post?

19. Slideshare

This is an excellent tool as it serves many purposes. Children can make presentation using PowerPoint that incorporate pictures and text. An audio file can then be created using Audacity then uploaded to Internet as a podcast. Slideshare will then combine both files together to create a PowerPoint slide shows with audio - very clever. I have used this tool extensively with the primary 6 and 7 children as a way to display the skills they have developed in PowerPoint. It is certainly worth adding this to one's resource list.

20. ViewBook

Well there are not fifty listed above as it appears Alan is still working on his list which will be fantastic when it is finished. Hopefully as Alan adds more I can update this post with new tools unless I have stumbled over them first.