The last three weeks of Term 2 were pretty hectic in our classroom as we used Photo Story 3 (that marvellous FREE download from microsoft) to prepare a 2-3 minute digital story each for our 3-way conferences.

3-way conferences involve Student, Parent(s) and Teacher – but the student does the majority of the talking!

Photo Story 3 is the perfect introductory medium to get the ball rolling and a great way to celebrate the things that are being down well and identify the things that aren’t going so well. It’s also a fantastic demonstration of embedded use of technology in the classroom.

Here’s the steps we used to create our 3-way Conference Digital Story:-

Step 1:
Storyboard

Class brainstorm about what my parents might want to know about my learning over the last two terms and what I would like to share with my parents.

Results: Reading; Writing; Maths; How I get on with others; My work habits; What I might need to work on; Something I am really proud of or my own choice of something that I would like to share.

Step 2:
Photos

Partner up and take a photo for each curriculum area I will be talking about.

Step 3:
Script

For each photo on the Storyboard, write down exactly what I have been learning (the learning intention), give an example of how I learnt it (the final product); Was I successful or not and how do I know? Include assessment results, state whether or not I’m working at the expected level for my age group.

Step 4:
Photostory3

Import the photos my partner took of me.

Record my script for each photo.

Add Copyright free/Royalty free released under Creative Commons music (at a very low level).
(Limited to a choice of two tracks only)

Create wmv. file ready to play at the start of my 3-way Conference.

Step 5:
DVD copy

For parents who would like one to keep or to send to relatives.

Reflection on using Photo Story 3 for a 3-way Conference

The power of hearing a child’s voice whilst seeing a photo of them at the same time, never ceases to amaze me and sometimes I sneak a peak at parent’s faces and see a look of total amazement on the majority of the faces watching the digital story their child has created.

Most students will identify their weaknesses and be “up-front” to their parents about them. Some are quite hard on themselves but the writing of the script allows the teacher to gently point out any “discrepancies” before the recording stage.

The beauty of Photo Story 3 is that you can leave all the bells and whistle stuff (like the slide transitions) to the programme to do automatically. This means that students can concentrate on the content – the part that really matters. But it also allows you to do that bit yourself if you want to explore that part of digital story telling as well.

This was most definitely a success with many positive comments from parents. Nearly all the questions that parents came to the 3-way conference with were answered. It was such a positive way to start a 3-way conference even if it contained some not so positive work habits of a student!!

This is the second time I have used Photo Story 3 with my class for reporting to Parents. Each time in reflection there are things I’d do differently.

1. Revisit ALL the learning that had taken place over two terms in a big brainstorm BEFORE starting the project as most students only wrote about what we’d just been learning.
2. Reverse Steps 2 & 3. When the photos were taken first, the students wrote their scripts to the picture taken and we had to have a big class discussion about the difference between the “doing” and the “learning”.
3. Have students create own original music to add to background.

Would I use it again next year? Absolutely!