Microsoft’s free Photo Story 3 is a useful tool for teachers and students alike purely based on it’s efficient use of resources in a quick and easy (enough) manner. Photo Story 3 allows you to create slideshows using your digital photos. With a single click, you can touch-up, crop, or rotate pictures. Some special effects, soundtracks, and your own voice narration to your photo stories. Then, personalize them with titles and captions.
I read an article today on the Times Educational Supplement blog regarding and these are some of the ways they suggest Photo Story 3 can be used in an educational setting:
-present new vocabulary using individual objects or by miming actions
-to practice dialogue work such as buying different items in a shop or asking for directions
-to give a description of your daily routine or local area for example
-to design a comic strip
-to make a record of a trip
-to put together a multimedia resource for your partner school
-to design a comic strip
-to make a record of a trip
-to put together a multimedia resource for your partner school
There is a well composed online tutorial including video clips and teacher notes on how to use Photo Story 3 for Windows at this website Assignment: Photo-movie.
This blog is part of a conversation on developments in our networked world. It is primarily intended for an education audience, in identifying critical technology, social and pedagogical trends, and their implications. 
September 11th, 2006 at 10:07 am
FotoMagico, awarded an Apple Design http://www.fotomagico.com, seems to be the Mac equivalent.
September 19th, 2006 at 11:58 am
Hi Paul,
My grade 3-4 students have been converting their published stories into online movies using Photo Story 3. The URL is http://middlepstories.learnerblogs.org/.
I also have also authored a set of notes written for teachers on Getting Started With Photo Story that is online if you take the Blogs and Furls link from my Simply Science website at http://users.pipeline.com.au/~jpearce/ and then go to the podcast section. Amongst the other links are links to notes on getting started with Edublogs, Wikispaces for Teachers and Audacity.
September 19th, 2006 at 9:57 pm
Hi John,
The “ICT & Science” section you have developed here - http://users.pipeline.com.au/~jpearce/ is a useful repository of links for Primary Science teachers interested in utilising ICTs in their practice. I look forward to having a good look through it and referring to it in my Term 4 planning. Thanks for sharing it.
September 29th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
Apparently PhotoStory won’t be part of Windows Vista according to APC magazine. The mag suggests that you will need to manually start a soundtrack and use a “Slide show” type function. Pity, it has a big following at my school.