Phototeach? Use PhotoPeach.

School trip to Firgas - photopeach slideshowSometime ago someone on my Twitter network posted a link to PhotoPeach which I looked at, book marked on delicious then thought nothing more of until this week. John Sutton (@HGJohn), an ICT Consultant working in Primary schools, blogged about his use of PhotoPeach pointing out that a group of Year 3  children ‘found the interface very easy to use and have been able to create slideshows entirely independently with the site’. So with that in mind I decided to give it a go and try it out in class.

I won’t go into how to use PhotoPeach in this post but just to tell you that it is incredibly easy to set up a slideshow which can also include a Quiz option. It’s so easy to use that after I demonstrated it and taught my class how to use it, they have been creating their own PhotoPeach slideshows without any guidance from me. Example 1, example 2, my own example based on a school trip.

3 of our senses on PhotoPeach
<object width=”445″ height=”326″><param name=”movie” value=”http://photopeach.com/public/swf/story.swf”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”/><param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true”/><param name=”flashvars” value=”photos=http://photopeach.com%2Fapi%2Fgetphotos%3Falbum_id%3Dky8pbf&autoplay=0&embed=1″/><embed src=”http://photopeach.com/public/swf/story.swf&#8221; type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”445″ height=”326″ flashvars=”photos=http://photopeach.com%2Fapi%2Fgetphotos%3Falbum_id%3Dky8pbf&autoplay=0&embed=1″></embed></object>
So I asked myself, what is it about PhotoPeach that my class prefer over other tools like Animoto, PhotoStory or Stupeflix? Ease of use. I asked my class the same question and they overwhelmingly voted for PhotoPeach as a tool of choice for creating slideshows. Some liked Animoto but didn’t like the restrictive 30 seconds in the free version and no one liked using PhotoStory! Stupeflix just confused them.

Each tool serves a purpose and that is to create a slideshow of images with sound. And each tool can be used with varying degrees of success with different age groups of children. PhotoPeach is an excellent all rounder and can be used throughout the Primary age range. The addition of a quiz brings an interactiveness to a finished slideshow and it’s this extra that my class are finding very useful.