Build upon the students' photodatabase activity by providing an assignment in which they are designers in charge of creating a billboard/website/digital pamphlet encouraging tourists to visit their city, school, or other location. We recommend that students create two billboards/websites/digital pamphlets: one that uses static imagery and another using dynamic imagery (a slideshow). Below are programs and some instructions we’ve found on using the programs to create slideshows. If these instructions don't work for you (maybe you don't have the same version of the program, the instructions just don't make sense, or the links have passed away), use a search engine to find some that do work. There are a lot of options out there.

In Paul’s classes, when students begin designing homepages for their websites, they often become aware of the mechanical constraints of static imagery and struggle to get the "right" image for this important representational space. Synecdoche is a term that could be introduced here as well as Burbules' (1997) article on hyperlinks and tropes "(Rhetorics of the Web: Hyperreading and Critical Literacy"). Such rhetorical language is technically enabling for students to describe the rhetorical moves they are making when selecting pictures and in using different communication mechanisms (static image or slideshow). At this point, we also discuss how timing of visual imagery can influence a slideshow's meaning. For instance, a fast slideshow might communicate excitement and thrill to an audience while a slow slideshow might indicate calmness and tranquility. And, if students start playing with timings in their slideshows so that not all images are presented within the same time frame, we can discuss how they can use different timings to communicate or assign different values to their imagery to audiences. A slideshow of New York City, for example, where pictures of boroughs other than Manhattan are presented in one second intervals except for Manhattan, which is presented for five seconds, might communicate to an audience that Manhattan, again, is THE important borough.

Digital slideshows made easy

• In Flickr there is a slideshow option. Creating a slideshow becomes a drag and drop procedure where students select from their photodatabase’s pictures. Students can create slideshows and save them as their names to the class Flickr account and they can post them on blogs or on websites. Instructions for creating a Flickr Slideshow.
• PowerPoint or Open Office and Vuvox can be used to create automatic slideshows as well. Despite Tufte's (2006) harsh critique of PowerPoint for presenting and simplifying information, PowerPoint can be a tool for working with dynamic imagery. Students can drag and drop visual images to create their slideshows. Instructions for turning a PowerPoint into a video/slideshow | OpenOffice automatic slideshows instructions | Vuvox (just a link but it's easy to figure out and play around)
• Adobe Photoshop and GIMP allow students to create slideshows by creating animated gifs.  Instructions are pretty easy to follow, but it is much easier for those teachers and students already familiar with Photo-editing software. GIMP animation | Adobe animation
• Use a search engine and search "slideshow creator" or "slideshow creator" or "simple image rotator" and you'll find websites with applications dedicated to making slideshows.

Recommendations

• For advanced designers and/or web authors, try learning and teaching students to use Flash and JQuery to create slideshows for websites. It's intimidating but if you try Lynda.com for tutorials you'll find that it's probably easier than you imagined.
• Walk students through the steps of creating slideshows OR have students figure it out and show you!