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Introduction
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CILT-SLC case study |
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The Holt School |
ICT |
Photo stories
As the culmination of a year’s work with several groups of fairly
able year 9 pupils I asked them to produce a ‘Photostory’.
This is a short story told via a series of photos (any number, though
between 6 and 12 seems most manageable) which can be supplied with speech
/ thought bubbles and captions in the foreign language - in this case
French. This appealed to the creative, imaginative and dramatic sensibilities
of the pupils and was an ideal project for the last weeks of the summer
term, when exams were over.
Pupils were put into groups of 3-4 and told they were going to produce a Photostory in the form of a Powerpoint presentation. They were asked to write a storyboard (in French) in which each section would correspond to one of the photos. This enabled me to correct their French and concentrated their minds on exactly which scenes would most effectively transmit their story, highlighting the dramatic element.
Pupils were then given a digital camera and a limited amount of time to take their photos. Those who wanted to were allowed to bring in props. The photos were then downloaded by our departmental technician and pupils were able to add speech bubbles, captions etc. The more IT-literate added small cartoons and special effects. It was eventually possible for some groups to present their work to the class using the interactive whiteboard. Themes varied from the murderous (death of a French teacher at the hands of his pupils, including use of the imperative form of the verb ‘mourir’!), to the everday (‘Une Mauvaise Journée’ for a pupil in trouble) to an interview with Eminem. It was interesting to note, however, that in addition to using grammatical items such as the passé composé for the captions pupils had to use a lot of transactional language in the speech bubbles e.g. ‘Je suis vraiment désolé’, ‘J’ai raté le bus’
We had access to only one digital camera, which meant that I needed a standby activity to occupy pupils waiting for their turn to take pictures. I therefore put my own simple photostory with blank captions and speech bubbles on the shared user area of the school’s computer network; pupils saved this to their own areas and invented captions and dialogues to go with the pictures. Obviously, simple blank photostories supplied by the teacher could provide a rich source of material for situational dialogues etc.
A final variation which I have tried out on a low ability year 10 group is to use pictures of celebrities downloaded from the internet and juxtapose them using a suitable computer programme such as Corel. Thus a middle-aged French teacher can appear to meet Christina Aguilera and pupils can supply an appropriate dialogue to go in the speech bubbles (e.g. inviting someone out to the cinema). Pictures of pupils can be substituted and in this way pupils get to interview their favourite star – albeit in a foreign language. This material can be used in any language and, once created, can be stored as a permanent resource.
A word of caution: it was only possible for me to try out this project because I had the help of our excellent departmental technicians Mr Postlethwaite and his successor Ms Watts. They had the know-how, time and patience to deal with the various technical problems involved. So unless you are familiar with the equipment and the programmes, get help!
Mark Bennett, The Holt Language College, November 2003
