By Scott Trudeau
I taught five years of math and science so I feel a bit out of my comfort zone writing this post. I was dabbling around with the Photoshop Elements 5.0 project creation tools when I stumbled on a neat interactive Flash photo gallery. The wizard allows for the easy creation of a “digital photo book.” The author can add photos, titles, and captions with a few clicks of a mouse; the reader can interact with the digital book by flipping the pages.
After a few strenuous minutes of deep thought (some people are marathon thinkers…I think more in short sprints), I figured the interactive book would make a great how-to writing activity. If I remember correctly, the how-to paper was an essential skill taught in my elementary and middle school days. It usually involved the following steps:
The interactive flip book would make a great prewriting activity for how-to papers. Students would create a digital photo gallery that would double as an outline for their how-to paper! After completing the “outline” (actually photo captions) they could add photographs using digital cameras. Finally, they could publish their projects to the web.
My finished example
See how it is done