Technology is wonderful! The potential for photo stories seems so great! The biggest "pro" I can see is using a photo story to help students connect personally to history in a way text cannot claim. Real photos and music combine to really create an emotional connection to what is taught.
Some of the cons, or at least things to be cautious of, when using photo stories is the tendency to become didactic and how easy it is to forget the objective. Because of this emotional targeted use of technology, with theme music and great pictures, I can see influencing children to not only think for themselves, but to think they way I want them to think. Real life doesn't have theme music (though I've contemplated the possibility of incorporating some into my own life) and even those really good things in history or politics will have their darker sides, just as the bad will have it's reasoning. For example, watching a photo montage of a couple at their wedding reception is wonderful, but hardly an accurate depiction of their relationship. I've seen myself in slide shows and known that, behind that smile I was frustrated at the time and that the memory may not actually be completely positive. I'm getting of track so, moving on (and actually applicable to getting off track) I can see myself showing a beautiful photo story that is moving and wonderful, but may not actually depict what I'm trying to say. The NASA photo story confused me just a little bit. I thought the motive behind it was to see what NASA had contributed to our lives but then, in the middle, a lot of time was given in memorial of those who lost their lives for the furtherance of space travel. If the story was meant to be a memorial then that amount of time would have been appropriate, but if it was meant to teach me more about NASA, then it missed the mark. It tried to do to many things. I think this one of the issues of wikis and blogs and the ability for everyone to put up anything they want is that it will take some weeding through to find really high quality stuff. This is exciting!
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