Group+1

Group 1: __**Sound Bites**__

Group 1- Select Tools to Review from the following groups:
 * SlideShow
 * Audio

Visit Alan Levine’s
Visit Alan Levine’s 50+ Web2.0 Ways To Tell a Story wiki. Read the information on the Home page. Select Tools By Type to see the list of different storytelling tools.

Your group is responsible for reviewing the best of the tools within your assigned set. Each person in the group should review a minimum of 2 tools. You can decide what tools you will choose and who will review what tool. Include the following information in you review:

• ease of use • site support • appropriate for what audiences • is there an educational version • strengths, weaknesses • ideas for use

Tool Reviews
Since this is a Google product, the support on the site is impeccable. I have found that Google’s propensity to include users in the development of products (like its “Labs” section that it used to have) has led to its understanding that sometimes people need help. The Help page is divided into How To sections and Fix It sections, and then there is a search bar to quickly find an answer. The only issue is that there does not appear to be contact information to actually ask a question of an expert; however, this is fixed with a “Picasa Help Forum” where you can have an open discussion with other users (much like a Wiki). This is appropriate for a bit more of the tech savvy audience as it seems a little overwhelming upon the initial download. The features are so good that you want to use all of them right away, and you have to remember to calm down and take it one step at a time. High schoolers in a tech class, or college students, or tech-adept teachers could use this product with only a little help. Unfortunately, there does not appear to have an educational version. Because there is no educational version, the first weakness might be that it is blocked by the school system. I know that AACPS blocks Google Images, so I can only imagine that a Picasa production would fall under the same fate. Also, if you upload from iPhoto, you have to go through an additional permission process before you can edit pictures, which is just slightly annoying. Speaking of that, you must have a Google account to use any of the upload features. Luckily, many of us already have that. If not, it's easy enough to acquire, and well worth it. The other main weakness I see is just that the capabilities are so vast that they are overwhelming, as previously mentioned. For someone just getting used to technology, this might take a while to get used to. However, the strengths are its ease of use after the initial “getting used to” period, and that it seems to be intuitive in the organization of photos. The editing software has a wide array of options, from adding text to editing the lighting. The capabilities are actually better than iPhoto itself, and Picasa may have found itself a convert in me. That being said, the educational uses are vast: with its capability to create a collage, a student could use photos, text and information for a final project. Students could simply learn how to edit photos for various purposes, whether journalistic to artistic to informational. Finally, the one I am most excited about is creating a movie. I used iMovie to create a movie previously, and this program looks so much more intuitive to use that word again. When I used that program, I found myself wanting to do certain things but not figuring out how to do it, but Picasa seems to easily add text, fonts, information to each photo, after converting a photo album to a movie automatically. This would be a great way to introduce a topic or generate interest in an upcoming unit. Loading an audio track is as easy as clicking audio track. I can hardly wait to play with this tool more for the educational opportunities, and this will be my screencast tutorial and Web 2.0 project for sure. ||= Beth || Tikatok has a very comprehensive FAQ section, from general questions about creating a book, to ordering, to contacting the company should you have a question that is not answered directly. This also has a copyright policy, appropriately enough, instructing its users to make sure whatever they use is not copyrighted material or it will be removed immediately. Having created my own iPhoto books before, I know how accomplished I feel when I get them in the mail, and I am an adult; I can only imagine how great this would be for a child! This could really be appropriate for any age, but it is clearly geared toward elementary school children who have an adult to help them. In fact, educators apparently get 40% off the list price. There is an educational version, clearly identified by the teacher tab at the top of the home page. There are lesson plans and templates to work from, and it is free for educators to set up an account. However, the final products still cost money, regardless of the discount. The strengths are addressing the creativity of each student. This empowers students to develop and create their own real live books. No more paper, pencil, and colored pencils; now, students can become legitimate published authors. For aspiring novelists, there is no better feeling. I remember when I was a ten year old, my friends and I all wrote “books.” Another strength is again the ease of use and sections divided by age. I imagine that if I were to create a book, I might even use the “guided” section to start just to familiarize myself with the software. The biggest negative to me is that this costs money. Of course to get a tangible product, it makes sense to charge money, but how can this be used in a classroom that can’t afford actual textbooks, and then expect either the school or parents to pay for the product? Another weakness is that this would require a moderately tech-savvy teacher to provide the help for the students, and to scan in illustrations if that is what the students choose to do. This would be a fairly time consuming activity, to say the least. The ideas for educational use are pretty self-explanatory: almost the entire site is geared toward students, and it advertises itself to teachers to “make your students published authors.” I think this would be a great end-of-the-year project for an entire class, to create a story piece by piece. First, the class would develop the characters and plot together, reviewing the plot pyramid in the process. Then, each student would be responsible for writing and illustrating two pages. Finally, they would go to the computer lab together to begin editing and revising, and uploading with the teacher. This activity would probably take about two-three weeks from start to finish in an advanced class, but if the funds were available to then purchase the books, that would be an incredible experience for the students. ||= Beth || It has a very identifiable FAQ section at the bottom of the webpage, which is where one would assume it is supposed to go. The questions in it seem pretty generic, but I did appreciate that if you notice a download problem, and it is not fixed automatically within 48 hours, you can let them know personally and get a real person. Again, the ease of use—and the potential uses—say to me that if you are having a problem, it probably isn’t worth the time. This is absolutely geared toward a more immature audience. It’s uploading a picture, making the person’s mouth move, and making them say funny things. This is not exactly rocket science. The introduction video directly addresses its adolescent audience when a talking animal says, “I used to have no friends. Then I used Blabberize. Now I’m the coolest kid in school.” Interestingly enough, it doesn’t appear to be appropriate for all audiences; Blabberize had to block its Twitter feed according to the announcement on the front page because of abuse, so apparently the immature audience was being overly immature. There is not an educational version. The strengths are absolutely that it is easy to use. The large, self-explanatory buttons make this approachable even for my 80 year old grandmother who doesn’t own a computer. However, if you try to open this site from Blackboard, the buttons do not work. Not necessarily a weakness, but an oversight on my part that made testing this a little irritating at first. Another strength is that you can download the video, rather than stream it. That takes the “internet is down” dilemma completely out of the equation. The biggest weakness, other than the propensity for abuse apparently, is that you have to pre-record an audio clip to attach to your photo. This is where suddenly it could become complicated for a technophobe. Sure, they could download a pre-recorded clip and just attach it, but the joy in this is to make your friend say something ridiculous, so wouldn’t you want to record it yourself? My first instinct is to say there are no educational uses, as it is just plain ridiculous. Humorous, but ridiculous. However, students adore the ridiculous, especially if it is teacher created. I think this easy to use site would be perfect to upload a photograph of a “character” from a novel, or a figure in history, and introduce a new unit. It could also be used as a review activity, where the teacher’s face is imitating a person, and students need to guess. Finally, for a bit more of a complicated activity, students could be assigned a figure in history/character and have to answer interview questions using it. Talk about an interesting and fun way to address different learning styles, as well as different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The development of the product covers application and creation, and they would be synthesizing their knowledge and understanding of what they learned, and having to develop their own answers based on that. || Beth || There is not much site support for Slideoo, if an error occurs, like what happened to me, a user would just have to self troubleshoot and play around with it until they got it to work. Since it relies on Flickr pictures, I went and looked around at the Help section and searched for Slideoo, but no results came back. So there is no site support for it, a user would have to troubleshoot it themselves. Slideoo would be appropriate for all audiences. It is very easy to use and does not do much except for creating a horizontal slideshow of photos on a person’s Flickr account. I do not see an issue involving a student of any age using the site. Slideoo does not have an educational service or feature. I do not know if Flickr is blocked through school systems, and if it is, then I imagine Slideoo would be blocked as well, since it uses Flickr images. As stated before one of the strengths are that it can create a slideshow that a person can scroll across, and Slideoo provides whatever coding you would need to post it on any variety of sites. It is also very easy to use and does not take a lot of time to get the hang of. The weakness I noticed is that it does not have much site support; users would have to figure out what their issues are and how to fix them. Some ideas for use could be that students who have a Flickr account could create Slideoo’s of their images and post them on their classroom blogs, if they have them or on any variety of sites. Using Slideoo to display pictures of projects posted on Flickr would probably save time and energy, because it could be posted directly to a Wordpress blog, and thus save people from clicking on a link to take them to the slideshow on Flickr. ||= Don || There is site support for Yodio. At the bottom of the page there is an “About” link, and once clicked upon; a user can read more information about the site. They can also click on the “Contact Us” option and submit any issues and or questions they have. The products created by Yodio could be appropriate for any audience, as it creates videos of voice narration for images. There are no educational versions, as it is a free site. Yodio recommends dialing a phone number and following the prompts to create your records. You can also upload preexisting audio files to the site; however they have to be in an MP3 format. So Yodio’s could be made in educational settings, though another issue arises as in order to make the files, teachers would need microphones and audio recording software that can save files in a MP3 format. One strength for Yodio is that it is a free site. It is also very easy to work through and use, as it guides you through using a tabbed menu on what do to. It also seems to have a very easily accessible support feature. There is also, even as a free member, no limit to the number of Yodio’s a user can create, nor is there a time limit to each Yodio. A drawback to Yodio is that they highly recommend using a phone to record the audio, which limits the accessibility to creating Yodios. If a person chose to use a prerecorded audio track, the track needs to be in an MP3 format, which could limit what a user can use, based on what their audio recording software saves files as. One idea that came to me as a foreign language teacher was to allow students to create a Yodio as a story. They could find images online or bring images in on a flash drive and upload them onto Yodio’s server. Then they could create a story from the images and record themselves narrating it. || Don || There is a comprehensive support for the site. It includes information about the terminology of the site and a step by step walkthrough on how to use the site. Slideroll would be appropriate for any audience. It is very user friendly and easy to use. There is no educational version, but as a member you have access to all the resources you would need to create a slide show. There is a pro version which allows you to do more, such as upload more images, create more slide shows, and other such features. The strengths for Slideroll would be that it is very easy to get the feel of the interface. It also allows you to add captions to the images in the slide show. Another strength is the ability to pan and zoom in on an image, which could allow the user to highlight a specific image by panning across it or zooming in on a specific part of it. There is also the option to sync a person’s Flickr account with their Slideroll account in order to use images from a person’s Flickr. A weakness of Slideroll is that a user is only allowed to upload 100 images maximum. Basic users can also only create up to 10 slide shows. <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Students could use Slideroll to present a project. They can caption the images they use in the slide show and place captions on them to describe what they are seeing. It could be offered as an alternative to Powerpoint, with the option to use images, music and text slides. || Don || The company offers a lot of support to the user with a FAQ section in addition to specific manuals for educators. They also offer a way to contact support directly if necessary. The tool can be used by anybody wanting to provide an interactive presentation and is a way educators can extend the classroom conversation. There is a K-12 Educational version at http://ed.voicethread.com/ Two great resources to help educators get started is the VoiceThread for education wiki at: http://voicethread4education.wikispaces.com/home and the Cybraryman's VoiceThread resource page at [] The strengths are: The weaknesses are: The Vuvox Collage tool uses a scrolling horizontal canvas for uploaded or imported media to be showcased in a more modern way than a traditional slideshow presentation. The images can be edited by being rotated, resized, layered or video could be placed inside edited cutouts of other images. Text, pop-up notes, website links can be can be activated by mouse clicks. This tool can be used by and for anyone wanting a strong visual impact. After looking over the FAQ section it did not appear very helpful, nor did it seem easy to contact support. There is not an educational version but it does not seem necessary. Strengths: Weaknesses: <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Ideas for use would be to enhance digital presentations. || Andrea || Strengths: Weaknesses <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">‍ || Andrea || Extremely easy, It led me straight through the steps to create a slide show add music and view my show. The hardest part was that I couldn’t remember the order of my pictures to write the captions. In less then 5 minutes I had a slideshow. The support is set up as a FAQ page but it did answer any questions I had and gave ideas of what you could do with PhotoPeach. You can also search their site. It would be appropriate and easy to use for all grades. However, older and more advanced students may not like it because there is not a whole lot of editing you can do to make the slideshow more interesting Yes, however is costs money. ($9 a month for up to 50 Students, which isn’t a huge amounte but I don’t think it is worth it for a slideshow maker. The Educational version does come with more options like uploading your own music, account manager, privacy and inappropriate material protections. The main strength is how easy and quick it is to use. You can make a slide show easily in 5 minutes. It sizes and zooms in on the photos automatically. You can even make quizzes on it. It also has privacy settings. The weakness is that it is so simplistic. To get any variety or options you have to pay for an account. There is an educational uses page on their website and it lists using PhotoPeach for staff development, to introduce books, to have students share stories(digital storytelling), or the quizzes for assessments. || Kathy || The site is not very fancy and very wordy. You can not actually create a book without contacting the creators for an invitation code, so I couldn’t tell how easy it was to actually create the books but from reading the FAQ it seemed fairly easy. The books are not fancy and you can upload pictures from flickr or you own. It is geared towards younger students using it but the directions are not geared towards younger students writing their own books so you would have to explain or show younger students how to create the book. It is mostly intended for teachers to create stories for beginning readers to help them read since students can read the stories or the computer will read the stories. It actually reminds me of a simplified version of Raz_Kids. The help sections were easy to follow and seemed in-depth covering a wide range of topics. Even including what a “tarheel” is. They also encourage you to contact them if there is a problem. Teachers to create the books (slideshow) and early elementary students to use the books The whole site is geared towards educational use, so there is not educational version. This is monitored by the fact that you have to email to get an invitation code and they ask you to make sure if kids are making the books that they are carefully edited. It is mainly a way to help students read more than it is to share photos. Strengths- Teachers can use the site to create their own books for their students to practice reading using their specific site words. It also is set up to have the computer read the story if necessary. Weaknesses- It is mainly geared for just younger students; it is very simplistic and plain. I don’t think it hold the children’s interest since students are use to much more advanced graphics. Unless the teacher created a specific story that captured their attention. The intended use is to create stories for beginner readers. However, older students could create books for younger students in Child Development classes, and teachers could use them for SPED adaptations for students that were older but significantly behind their grade level. || Kathy || Picturetrail makes it easy to create what they call a “picture flick”. Upload your photos from your computer or from some other photo sharing sites (Flickr is not listed though). You can upload multiple photos at once by holding the “ctrl” key. You just choose the shape you want your pictures to make, and any other little extras you want to decorate with. There is a also way to upload pictures from your phone and they are in the process of adding the ability to add music to your flick. • **Site support-** There is not a lot of support on the site but there is a contact us and a help tab. The help tab is set up as a FAQ page and is pretty extensive for how easy the application is to use. Any questions I had I was able to find the answers to on the Help tab • **Appropriate for what audiences**- Flickr is easy to do and would be appropriate for any age although you do need an email address to sign up. It is also is not intended for you to look at other people’s picture flicks. There is a community tab but you have to login separately for that. • **Is there an educational version**. There is not an educational version but the site is geared towards kids based on their choices of backgrounds and other custom features. • **Strengths**, - best feature of pictures trails is that it makes an unusual slideshow but yet still focuses on each photo so that you can see each photo well. It is also very easy and quick to use. • **Ideas for use-** The first time I saw a Picturetrail was to advertise the Black Eyed Susan books. Each year FCPS puts out a picture trail that media specialist put on their website advertising their Black Eyed Susan books. The pictures really catch the student attention and easily share the BES books. Picture trail could also be used as a hook or engagement piece for a lesson. If you had pictures that related to the topic you were going to study that day showing on a picture trail and students would have to guess what they were learning about or what the pictures had in common. You could also use it to showcase student work. || Kathy ||
 * = **Name of Tool** ||= **URL** ||= **Review of Tool** ||= **Reviewed By** ||
 * = Picassa ||= http://picassa.google.com ||= Other than adapting to a new technology, I must admit Picasa is very easy to use. Downloading is as simple as clicking a button. Upon first launch, it automatically searches your computer for pictures and then, even better, automatically imports them into the program. I have over 5,000 pictures on computer, and the import was still completed in only five minutes. Then, it organizes them by “roll” and year. If you have ever used photo editing software before, the set up is the similar. The most obvious section an educator would be concerned with (or at least we are concerned with) has its own tab: Create. You can create a collage, a movie, poster, and publish to blogger. It has photo editing features that would take some getting used to, but again, they are similar to other editing options on other software and can be easily picked up.
 * = Tikatok ||= http://www.tikatok.com ||= Tikatok is probably the second most complex of the three sites I visited. However, you can jump right in on the front page and begin creating a book, or click the very visible “How It Works” tab, and then get text and a video explaining how it works. The main premise is children (with an educator or parent as a guide) can write and illustrate their own book, upload it all to the website, and then actually purchase the finished product. You can buy a hardcover book for $18, a softcover for $15, and even download a digital book for $2.99 (however, with all the other free slideshow software out there, I don’t know who would pay even $.50 for a digital copy). Once you begin “creating” a book, they have it divided into three categories based on age group: personalized books that are simply uploading an image and special message, geared toward “all ages;” then StorySparks, for ages eight and up, that have guided ideas for books; finally, there is a “Start from Scratch” option, which they suggest is for ages ten and up—this also makes it pretty clear what audience this product is appropriate for, conveniently enough.
 * Blabberize || http://blabberize.com || My initial impression is to laugh hysterically. It’s “instruction” on the front page involves a talking llama with a funny accent. The set up looks so easy that one of the only quotes on the home page is “It takes like 30 seconds.” And it’s true, you simply click “Make one,” choose a picture, draw the mouth on the picture, upload an audio file that you have recorded and voila you have a pretty amusing (and pretty ridiculous) graphic image. You do have to download it in a video file, rather than stream it, so that might be annoying.
 * = Slideoo ||= www.slideoo.com || <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">This site is very easy to use. The site creates a horizontal slideshow of images from a person's Flickr account. When you go to the homepage, you are asked to enter in your Flickr username and then you can select to either use a set a your photostream. When you select which set you would like to use, you can then customize the final product. The user is then given many options of where to use the slideshow, be it Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, etc. and upon selecting whichever site is desired, Slideoo then provides a link to post it or a code that can be copied and pasted into the desired site. Overall the site is very easy to use and it only takes a few steps to get a final product. One drawback is that it is a Flickr oriented site, so a user needs to have a Flickr account. Another hiccup that I noticed is that it can take several times for it to recognize a username at least that is what happened for me. Since I was having trouble accessing my photostreams I felt the desire to check another classmate’s Flickr and see what happens. When I saw that it worked, I went back to my Flickr settings and perused them and tried to figure out what the issue was. I changed a setting to say that people could put my pictures into gallieries and then I attempted to use Slideoo again and it was able to find my username and photos; so the hiccup is very easy to resolve.
 * Yodio || www.yodio.com || <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Yodio seems to be a very easy site to use. A Yodio is a video of pictures with a voice narration. Upon arrival to the site, a video starts up explaining a multitude of information about the site and what a Yodio is. Once you sign up, it walks you through how to use the site and create the products.
 * Slideroll || www.slideroll.com || <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Slideroll is very easy to use. Slideroll is a site that can make slideshows from pictures. A user can add music and captions can to the shows as well. Upon registering, a user would just need to upload images that they wished to use. After the images are uploaded, the user would need to go to create a slideshow under Slideshow Creator. Images need to be added to the creator, and then they can be placed in any order that they desire. As a user moves around the slideshow creator, there is text at the bottom that describes what each button and choice will do. The slideshows can then be published and given a code to be embedded into another site.
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Voicethread || https://voicethread.com/ || VoiceThread is an easy way to create narrated slideshows with imported images, videos, documents or presentations to create a conversation with media. Participants can join in on the conversation in five different ways by telephone, webcam, microphone, text or file upload. This tool allows a group discussion surrounding the media. The voice is not live but recorded therefore users can delete, or modify their comment. The comments are secure and participant access is controlled by the presenter. The website has a great demonstration and explanation of the tool called “What is VoiceThread?” at [|https://voicethread.com/?#q].
 * Great tutorials and support available
 * Different ways for students to participate
 * Can be used for classroom conversations, tutoring and lessons
 * Educators can use for professional development
 * More engaging, personalize and interactive than traditional digital presentations (PowerPoint)
 * Costs money (pricing by classroom, school or district) || Andrea ||
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Vuvox || <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">http://www.vuvox.com/ || Vuvox is a slideshow tool that has two features, Vuvox Express and Vuvox Collage. The Express is a way to make a slideshow more like a video. In Vuvox Express, the user indicates the media to use such as a flickr set, Picassa album, RSS feeds, Utube and Engadget videos. After selecting the media, you can choose from several video type styles to arrange in a variety of layouts. After that you can add more drama by applying variations which change the background templates.
 * Tool for dynamic, visually engaging slideshows
 * Great deal of variety for enhancing creativity
 * Free account
 * Company has a blog at http://www.vuvox.com/blog/
 * Only for students 13-17 years of age with parental permission
 * You need a lawyer to review the terms of use agreement. It is so lengthy and complicated.
 * Other providers do similar enhancements for mixing media presentations
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">SlideFlickr || <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">http://slideflickr.com/ || SlideFlickr allows a user to create and embed Flickr slideshows in 3 steps. The slideshow is generated from flickr users, sets, groups, tags and links to audio mp3. The steps are to insert a Flickr username or URL, customize the slideshow and then preview it. It is simple and easy to use, especially if you are familiar with Flickr. This application can be done by anyone and does not require an educational version.
 * Free and simple to use
 * Established photo sharing website
 * Easy to embed in blogs
 * Flickr pro has an annual fee
 * PhotoPeach || [|www.photopeach.com] || **__Ease of use-__**
 * Site support-**
 * Appropriate for what audiences-**
 * Is there an educational version-**
 * Strengths, weaknesses-**
 * Ideas for use-**
 * Tarheel Reader || http://tarheelreader.org/ || **__Ease of use-__**
 * Site support-**
 * Appropriate for what audiences-**
 * Is there an educational version-**
 * Strengths, weaknesses-**
 * Ideas for use-**
 * ImageLoop || http://www.imageloop.com/ || Is now a mobile app to view slideshows. You can no longer create slideshows || Kathy ||
 * slide || http://www.slide.com || No longer available as of March 6th 2012 || Kathy ||
 * rock you || http://www.rockyou.com || No longer available as of March 31, 2012 || kathy ||
 * Picturetrail || http://www.picturetrail.com || • **Ease of use**
 * Weaknesses**- It is a little too geared towards kids, especially the middle school age. Student s could easily go overboard adding hearts and adding neon to pictures for school use. As a teacher you would have to be a minimalist when using the custom features or you would lose the pictures in all the glam.
 * Embed your screencasts here. Be sure to add your name above your embedded work:**
 * (example: "Margaret's Screencast on ___"**
 * (example: "Margaret's Screencast on ___"**

<iframe width=802 height=534 frameborder="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/embed?sc=clff2IkFn&w=800&v=3">
 * Beth Broccolino's Screencast on Picassa**

Here is the link as well: http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/clff2IkFn


 * Kathy Domboski's Screencast on Photo Peach**media type="custom" key="13939172"

Here is the link: @http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/clfhndk3u

Here is my script

media type="custom" key="13914900"
 * Don Berry's Screencast on Slideroll**

Here is the link: [] Here is the script for the Screencast: Andrea's Screencast of VoiceTread media type="custom" key="13969416" Here is the link: []