Photo Story 3 is a free piece of software from Microsoft that readily motivates the most reluctant of children. It is easy to use and it gives professional looking results. It is a sophisticated slideshow for digital photographs but can be put to good use in all curriculum areas to present project information as pictures, sound and text. Using single clicks, photographs can be touched-up, cropped, or rotated. Special effects, soundtracks, and voice narration can be added to photo stories. They can be personalized with titles and captions. Small file sizes make it easy to send photo stories in an e-mail. They can be viewed on a TV, Windows Mobile–based portable device as well as a computer.

This project develops a range of skills which can later be developed and expanded using Windows Movie Maker. Children will need a bank of digital photographs to work with. These can be provided by the teacher or, depending on the nature of the project, children can take these themselves using school cameras.

It is possible to obtain images using search engines but poor quality images do not work well especially when resized or when the text is added. There are also problems with copyright when using other people’s images. If using images from the internet the images should be credited.

The project outlined was delivered to groups of Year 5 and 6 pupils over a period of five 1 hour lessons, but with support could be used with any Key Stage 2 classes.