This week, we were asked to use a digital story-telling tool in order to tell a story about ourselves. I found it difficult to think of an interesting story, and decided to stick to a topic that relates to the class: how I became a teacher, as well as my reflections on being one. Since my life has been fairly eventful in the past couple of months, I found my story to flow well and making it came naturally.

I used Exposure in order to make my story. Its format was very simple, yet sleek. It was a very user-friendly website, and I prefer it to other tools I have used for making websites, as they often do not do what I want them to do. Exposure had very easy to choose formats and allowed me to easily upload my own photos, however, I wish I would have been able to crop the photos within the website itself rather than before uploading them.

I usually do not like talking about myself, but I had a lot of fun searching through my camera roll for pictures that would go along with the story I was telling. I found myself getting distracted by forgotten memories, and it was a nice trip down memory lane for me. And, putting the pictures together on the website gave me a satisfying and eye-appealing layout that I was eager to show others. For such a simple assignment, I felt that I was able to make something that I was proud of, which is a phenomenon that does not happen often.

Such a tool would be fantastic for students in creating an “about me” at the beginning of the year or even a book report. Students could use pictures that they find online or draw them to be scanned and uploaded. I would also be interested in seeing it used for a Science experiment to document the steps in an experiment. Exposure could be used for a Spanish class, in which students write sentences and enhance them with photos, or for a History class to create a chronological timeline of an event. The possibilities are endless, and since it is a free program, it is one that students should have no problem accessing.

Here is the link to my story about becoming a teacher: https://npatterson.exposure.co/becoming-a-teacher?source=share-npatterson

And, here is an in-depth review from a professional photographer.