Last summer my brother attended a “Cool Tools for Tech Savvy Schools” workshop I facilitated at a neighboring school district. Since then he has taken the digital plunge and has been successfully integrating all types of technology into his sixth and seventh grade classrooms at The Walker School near Atlanta, Georgia.

In fact, following a recent field trip to Space Camp located Huntsville, Alabama, he transformed photos from the event into a cool video using Fotovidia, an IOS app that allows users to quickly and easily create dynamic slideshows using images from the photo library of any iPad, iPod, iPad mini or iPhone that is functioning with the iOS 4.3 or higher.

That’s right! Simply select photos, add your favorite music and text where desired and—tada! The result is a pretty neat movie highlighting an activity, project, assembly and/or field trip—one that can be shared with students, colleagues, parents and friends via You Tube and/or email. Better yet—the finished projects can even be embedded into a classroom web site, blog or wiki to show the world you have arrived in the 21st Century!

Check out a Fotovidia example shown below.

To view how a Fotovidia movie can be embedded into a wikispace, take a look at my brother’s recently created site located at Forsh1.

Classroom Connection:

Fotovidia is an excellent digital storytelling app! Not only can teachers use this tool to highlight a class or school event, but the use of a digital story is a great way to introduce, teach and/or review concepts. More importantly, this strategy can be utilized for a variety of project-based assessments in which students can demonstrate their understanding of skills acquired during a lesson or unit while imagining, planning, designing, composing and inventing—skills crucial to 21st Century learning!

Keep up the awesome work, Brian—and you’ll be as geeky as me in no time! ♥