In our last round of technology tools I was surprised to find one I really liked. Other's I was familiar with and have only limited use for, for assorted reasons I'll go into.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11132Turns out I really like Picture Story. I did have difficulty making it work at first. The first laptop I tried it on worked well for getting the photos downloaded and lined up, even edited. However, the microphone did not record sound well at all. The first few words would be clear enough, but then fade out and the background static was terrible. However, my tablet computer recorded really excellent sound and compiled the video well. Saving it to google drive then let me move back to the first computer to check the video for function and playback. At which point I took out the included music because, while it sounded fine on the tablet, on the PC speakers the music was really distracting. Probably something different in the balance settings. Or that laptop just has really bad speakers compared to my tablet (which is made for viewing media and has very good sound). In any event, I'm going to introduce it to my students as an option for making reports and presentations. It wasn't exactly fast to make the story, but it wasn't hard.
Flickr
On the one hand, it would be nice to use Flickr, since my students are already generally used to it. On the other, controlling the content is a worry and it is blocked by my school network anyway.
Same problems as flickr, really.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/inside-white-house/interactive-tour