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Summer Reading at New York Libraries

What's Your Story?

We all have stories to tell and share. Stories from our imagination, stories about our lives, stories about places we’ve been or want to see, stories about our dreams, our happy times, our sad times, stories of where our families came from. So, what’s your story?

Use the story starter ideas and “mix and match” tools listed at the bottom of the page to create and share your own stories.

Some Story Ideas

Put yourself in the picture

Family Stories

Create a movie of photos that tell the story of your family and where they came from. Find music from your grandparents day to help tell the story. What were their lives like? What do they remember of THEIR grandparents?

Community Stories

Tell the story of your community. Get out your camera and take some photos or video footage of your favorite places. Use a video editing tool to put it all together and narrate your story.

Book Trailers

Use video, photos and audio to create a book trailer for your favorite book. Just like a movie trailer. (Example: Whirligig)

Podcast

record your thoughts about a favorite movie, game, book or whatever! Easy & free to do with Audacity.

Memory Maps

Search Google Maps (or Google Earth) for someplace that you visited, take a screenshot of the map and use that as part of your story.

You're the Expert!

Have something you love to do? Take pictures and create a slide show to share your tips with others.

Computer Guru

Record something from your computer screen with a screencasting tool to share tips on using your favorite web site or favorite software.

Photo Stories

Search for photos, add them to your presentation and write a story to go with them with Create a Story Presentation.

Comic Genius

Use Xtranormal or GoAnimate to make a cartoon video.

Tools to Create

Lots of tools to help you find photos, create music, edit video, make comics, record your voice, edit photos and more.

Online Photo Editing and Photo Effects

Screencasting

Screen Shots

  • How to use the PC Snipping Tool to take a screen shot. You can save an image of what’s on your computer screen and use them just like photos in all sorts of projects.

Video Editing

  • iMovie – Macintosh video editing software.

Online Video Storage

Record Audio

  • Audacity – Record directly with at microphone or upload an audio file. Can also record from iPhone & Android phones.

Make Music

  • Garage Band – Macintosh music software
  • Soundation – online music studio with recording, effects, virtual instruments and over 400 free loops and sounds.

Create Graphics

  • Canva – Create posters, flyers, invitations, graphics for presentations and much more.

Storytelling & Presentation tools

  • Storybird – choose from some amazing graphics and write your own story.
  • Glogster – Make a poster that includes audio, photos, videos and more.
  • Animoto – Turns photos into amazing videos set to music
  • Voicethread – upload your photos and narrate your story.
  • Digital Storytelling Tools – more tools to explore

Find Creative Commons music, photos and other stuff to use in your projects

Some handy sites to help you find photos, music and other media that you can legally reuse in your projects. Before you use someone else’s stuff, make sure you have permission. Look for a Creative Commons license on it.