Bubbleshare of Climbing Popo

At the suggestion of Cheryl Oakes, an innovative Maine educator I have never met face to face but corresponded with a few times via web 2.0 technologies, I have created my first Bubbleshare photostory this evening. Bubbleshare is a free website that lets anyone upload photos, similar to Flickr, but also record accompanying voice narration.

My first Bubbleshare “album” features images and narration of a climb I made in 1993 of the volcano Popocatepetl in Mexico. I posted about this last week after scanning and uploading about twenty pictures of that climb to Flickr. I talked about the experience of climbing a volcano with students in Room208 during an iChat videoconference last Monday, in response to their question “Where have you traveled before?” and thought it would be fun to share those images. Cheryl’s idea of using Bubbleshare is even better, since it includes voice narration!

This use of a web-based technology (read/write web technology) to create a still-image digital story reminds me of the Primary Access project coordinated by faculty and staff at the University of Virginia. The difference between Bubbleshare and Primary Access is that with Bubbleshare users have to actually upload their images to make narrated digital stories with them, and Bubbleshare does not presently support a “Ken Burns” pan effect during slideshows. Primary Access integrates with Flickr and other web-based image sources and just links to the pictures, rendering on-the-fly and not actually “copying” any image content from other locations on the web. Primary Access therefore offers an innovative way to deal with digital image copyright issues, since the images are not actually copied in any way during the slideshow, just dynamically linked and displayed.

I do like Microsoft’s free PhotoStory3 program, but resent the file incompatibility of the Windows Media Player files it exports by default with other computer platforms (like Macs). iPhoto and iMovie, part of iLife06 on Mac OS X, are still much more powerful and user-friendly I think compared to PhotoStory. But Bubbleshare has advantages over even these software tools, since it is free and web-based!

If you have created or know of other Bubbleshare digital stories that you’d like to share, please comment here and include links. I am going to post soon on the SITE Digital Storytelling blog about Bubbleshare, and would love to include some links to additional Bubbleshare examples. Thanks again to Cheryl for suggesting Bubblshare!

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On this day..

• 10 Days till EdCampOKC 2017: March 4, 2017 at Del City High School – 2017
• iPad Video App Smash: Auphonic, Voice Record Pro and Green Screen – 2016
• Presentations on Creativity, 3D Printing, Digital Sharing and More – 2016
• Audio Podcasting with iOS and YouTube – 2015
• Sleet Sledding: The Movie (fun with iMovie for iPhone Trailers) – 2013
• Narrate a SlideShow with ShowMe – 2012
• Create a Narrated Slideshow with ShowMe for iPad – 2012
• Marzano Causal Teacher Evaluation Model by Robert La Grassa – 2012
• Lessons Learned from Finger Puppet Theater on Vimeo – 2011
• 5th Grade Colonial Living History Museum – 2011