Telling stories with Digital Images: Bubbleshare

 

 

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TeachMeet Roadshows: the ICT Afternoon with your whole school staff. Contact us to find out more.

If you've done this you might be interested in furthering your skills: Using images as the basis for research and thinking skills - Flickr

 

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Course Summary

In this course participants aimed to answer the following questions:

 

• Understand the background to photosharing
• Understand some different educational applications for photosharing
• Learn how to use the Bubbleshare photosharing website
• Understand the responsibilities of the teacher and learner when taking or using digital photographs

 

 

Software to download & equipment to buy

Software

• Does your digital camera needs special software to operate?

• You will need the latest version of the free Flash Player (Flash 8.0)
• Launch the Bubbleshare website and create a free class account with a work email address and password. (This may be visible to students)

   

 

 

 

Equipment

• One PC or Mac
• A digital camera or webcam for each group of children
• A USB cable to connect camera to computer

 

 

Background to photo sharing

 

 

Photo-sharing has long been something that individuals have done with their holiday snaps or pics of the newborn baby for far-flung members of the family. Good photosharing websites allow the photographer to decide who can see the pictures. Often, there is the ability for those who can see the pictures to leave a comment, add a 'postit' note to the top of the picture or run a set of photographs as a slideshow.

 

Educational uses of photosharing are becoming more common. The examples used in this training centre on simple sequencing exercises, including:

 

• Primary: a sequencing exercise on planting
• Primary-Secondary: a sequencing exercise on splitting a cell
• Secondary: a sequencing exercise on making the perfect cup of coffee
• Secondary: a sequencing exercise on a science experiment: Kaboom!

 

 

 

Creating a simple sequencing exercise on the web

a) Uploading pictures to Bubbleshare.

1. Drag the photos you want to use to a folder on the desktop. This makes them easy to find later.
2. Launch the Bubbleshare website. Log in.
3. Click "Create a New Album"
4. Give your album a name.
5. Click "Upload photos"
6. Find the photos you put on the desktop earlier and select them all. Click 'Open'.
7. Click "Next"
8. Wait until all the photos upload (you'll hear a signal when this has happened). The more photos, the more time it will take.
9. Click "Next"

 

 

 

b) Making sure your album is private or public

1. You will see the first photo of the set. Click "Album properties", on the left.
2. Choose whether you want the photos to be private (only those you send an invite to can see the album) or public (anyone can see the photos).

   Choose whether you want those who view the pictures to be able to leave comments (good for formative/peer assessment and parental links)

   N.B. In all instances of taking pictures where young people can be seen, make sure you have followed the guidelines in eduBuzzSupport.

3. Click "Update"

 

c) Adding to the photos - telling a story

1. Underneath each photo is a space where students can type anything they wish - a title, a description of what is in the photo, a story. In this way they can make up pictorial stories.
2. Above each photo is a library of objects (speech bubbles, cartoon elements etc) which can be added on top of each picture. These, too, can be used to tell a story or describe what is in the picture.
3. Above each photo in that library are options to add 30 second audio or video clips over the top of the photo. Currently, this option does not work in school, but does work outside the Local Authority. We are currently looking into a way we can make this work everywhere.

 

 

Organising photos across the whole school community: Using tags

Tags are keywords which group images together. They can be typed into the box on the left of screen called 'Tags'.

Tags can be used very cleverly to group a whole class or whole project's pictures together across many different accounts or student projects.

 

• For example, to group all projects together from Musselburgh Grammar School you could use the tag: mgs.

• To group all the pictures from Law Primary School we could use the tag: lawprimary. Choose something distinctive.

• You can also use more than one tag. To group all the pictures from the Romans project at Law Primary school we could combine two tags: lawprimary romans.
• To bring photos to the attention of the wider eduBuzz community use the tag: edubuzz.

 

 

Preview and publish your album

By clicking preview you get a good idea of what the finished article will look like. You can go back to edit or publish. You can always go back and fiddle with an album once it's published, too.

 

• BubbleZoom: allows you to hone in on a part of the picture - great on the interactive whiteboard.
• Extras: Gives you games made out of a photo of your choice.

You can share your album:

 

• By email - just insert the emails of the people you want to see the album. No-one else can view it.
• By Community - this makes the album public for all to see
• By inserting into a blog - copy and paste the code into a blog post or sidebar and everyone who reads your blog can see a slideshow there.
  • If you've an Exc-el blog activate the Bubbleshare plugin, then include a line like this in your post [bubbleshare 98533] where the number identifies your album.

• For this latter option, you may be interested in the course on Making Your Blog Look Good.