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World War 1 Project

This project assumes that you have worked through the basic tutorial for using Photostory and that you are familiar with the application, sourcing images, etc.

The purpose of this project is to create a short video presentation of a famous World War I poem.

The video’s purpose is to have researched and used a selection of photos and images of World War I to illustrate a famous poem written during the period in history.

By combining the use of images and voice over the students will begin to show a connection between the images and text, both primary sources of evidence. They will begin to show an understanding of the historical time, the conditions for soldiers and help bring more relevance to the text studied.

Find your resources
You will need to find a number of images to use, I would suggest a least five. For this project, used images from a variety of sources, but mainly in school I use the British Pathe News website.

Link: British Pathe website »

This is an excellent website for sourcing primary evidence. If you are in a UK school which is affiliated to any of the UK's regional broadband consortia, you should be able to access all the images and films free of charge.

Failing that bit of luck, there is a huge amount of images available on the internet.

Remember to credit the source of the images. Talk to the students about why this is important (copyright, intellectual rights, plagiarism, etc.)

Preparing the resources

Ideally, save all the images in one folder and, to aid discussion and decision making, print out a contact sheet so the students can see the images they are going to be using.

The poem

It is by using the images and the students themselves to read/narrate the poem that helps to bring it to life. Teach the poem to the students by reading it aloud, sharing it on a worksheet, etc.

It needs to be chunked up so that when narrated with the images it can flow without being too disjointed. This could be one of the teaching points for the students to solve. Great piece of team work, decision making...

Getting started with the ICT

Having chosen which images to use, we now need to get started using Photo Story to import the images.

Alternatively, you can dispense with the initial difficulties of locating the images and importing them. Using a prepared file means that you just have to start by deleting the images not wanted for this piece of work. It will save some time but will not allow the students to learn the process of importing images.

When you have your chosen images in the correct order on the screen, click the ‘Next’ button at the bottom right of the screen. You will be prompted to remove the black borders from the slides. This happens automatically at this stage. This changes how much of the slide can be seen. You can also do this manually now or later. The automatic process asks for confirmation of any changes made before allowing you to continue anyway.

Title and text

I like to remind students that when working with videos it is not necessary to use titles or text on every image. Refer to their own knowledge of watching TV and films. They will be able to recall that the most important times for adding text are the introduction titles and information and the closing credits. Which programmes have they seen with titles and text on every part? As the poem is being read they might choose to add the text to the slides.

This is a good time to discuss contrasting colours. Dark background – light text or visa versa is a good rule but with photo and other images it is not always the most reliable. It is important to allow the students to try different placements and colours so they can find this out for themselves. Encourage experimentation until the students are happy with the results. This can be added as one of the success criteria – that all text is easily read by the audience.

Lost work

Don’t forget to save the work as you go. Despite the fact that computers and technologies are becoming more stable, there is always the fear that the ‘blue screen of death’ will appear to tell you that all work (and often hope) is lost. Encourage the students to get into the habit of saving their work as they go. Each time they finish a small piece of editing or change something – save it. Show them the Save project button at the bottom left. Go through the process with them a couple of times, reminding them that it always asks if you want to use the same filename and location (once you have saved it for the first time).

Narration

The next screen in Photo Story invites the team to provide a recorded sound track, a narration, to give appropriate information for the audience to discover more about the topic.

Basically, each image can have its own narration recorded. The length of time the image stays on the screen will be directly related to the length of the narration. If there is no narration attached to any individual slide it will automatically remain on the screen for a default 15 seconds. You can alter the length of time using the ‘Customise Motion…’ button underneath the display screen.

This screen introduces the ‘Preview…’ button. When you click this button you will see a small screen appear and the application will run the video including any narration or changes you have made so far. It is a good way of checking the volume level of the narration. Re-record any narration that is too quiet or too loud. Encourage the students to moderate the levels of their own voice to make the narration sound the same volume throughout.

The previewed video also contains automatically added effects – zooming in or out of images, tracking shots (starting focusing on one area and moving to another), etc. These effects can be changed or removed as desired using the various options in the customise motion dialogue box. For now, encourage the students to leave it as it is and concentrate on the narration.

Customising motion

The application automatically adds motion to the images which helps the audience see the finished video as a motion video. It adds effects (motion) to simulate movement and give the impression that what is seen is not static. This can be used to great effect to enhance the narration. Want to play? Go ahead and give it a go!

This part of the process helps to illustrate the poem. Try to create a slow tracking shot (from one end of a trench to the other) which shows the expression on the soldiers' faces, the condition of the trench, etc.

This part could be a development of the project once the rest is complete. It provides a great opportunity for discussion and empathy.

Roll over Beethoven!

The next screen ‘Add background music’ is another area where the students can be encouraged to experiment to find a suitable soundtrack to add to their video. The teaching points for this area are, however, very important and it may be necessary to remind the students that the finished piece is intended for a specific audience who may not appreciate their favourite song playing in the background! The music needs to be unobtrusive but at the same time support the message being made in the video. By all means allow experimentation, but once the criteria (an assessment point) have been established allow sufficient time for the students to make appropriate choices. Do not allow ‘because I like it’ statements.

The length of the background music is determined by the length of the visual elements. If you decide to import music as the background music it will be automatically faded out at the end of the video. You might need to make changes to the length of each of the images (see Customising motion) or the track itself. What an excellent time to start talking about copyright and its use. There has been debate on this for many years and the music industry will continue to fight its corner. It is something that I, as a musician and composer, have conflicting views but it is not my livelihood. Another important teaching point and discussion to be had is the use of others’ music. Who does the music belong to? Is it right to use it without asking permission of the composer or ‘owner’?

Once the music has been chosen click the ‘Preview…’ button to see the impact the music makes on the video. This is a good time to use peer assessment to help moderate the musical decision-making. Ask other students to watch the preview and mark the use of music on a scale of 1 to 5 based on the appropriateness of the music supporting the purpose and audience. This is no different to how the media industry has decisions ratified or changed. Another fine teaching point! Hits those Work-related education outcomes too!

The application has a volume slider to allow the students to reduce the volume of the background music. It’s default setting is on ‘High’. I start by moving it down to the first notch above ‘Low’ on the scale and make upward adjustments if necessary. Background music is important and expected in all programmes seen on TV or on film. What is the impact if music is not used? Does it detract or enhance? What is the impact if music is not used at all?

And finally…

The final screen is the ‘Save your story’ area when you are prompted to save the working file and the final video. The application gives you a number of options. I usually make no changes here and allow the application to make a video that is optimised for viewing full screen on a computer.

The final video will, invariably, be seen via a computer screen. Even if the video is uploaded to the internet, the advent of ‘Web 2’ means that broadband capacity and video streaming is the norm now. It is more unusual for internet access to be ‘dial up’ now and the vast majority of schools in the UK are connected to the internet using broadband. This means that most people are able to download or stream video files with the minimum of difficulty so reducing the size of the video is probably not an advantage.

When the application has made or ‘rendered’ the video file you will be prompted to view the final product. Now is the time to review the decisions made in this process. Have the students successfully achieved the assessment criteria of the overall project and each production stage. The worksheets Creative media projects templates have an assessment page at the back which can be used to facilitate this discussion or as a way of recording the outcomes of the debate.

Sharing the finished product with others

There are a number of places where videos like this can be shown to a wider audience. If your school has a learning platform or VLE you might consider adding it to it and invite others to comment.

Allowing others to see it is an important aspect of preparing projects for different audiences. Video sharing sites are not recommended as the filtering is not a rigorous aswe as educators might hope. An alternative to the VLE where viewers need to be logged in to view the videos are sites such as the Clips website from E2BN that is built expressly for this purpose. It claims it is "a safe video and animation publishing for schools".

What now?

There are number of more projects available to try at micktruman.com/teaching which use the skills learned in this project. Use the worksheets as a starting point for further projects.

If you found this useful please let us know and tell others – share and pass it on!

Mick Truman
Contact: info@micktruman.com

Resources for this project:

• Worksheet - World War I poem
• Website link: British Pathe »
• Website link: Clips (safe video sharing) »