Microsoft Photo Story 3
One of the most widely used software programs used to create digital stories on PCs; especially good for beginners.

Photo Story 3 is a free, easy-to-use program from Microsoft that lets you create slideshows using your own digital photos and images you download from the web or scan from old photographs, documents, books, magazines or newspapers. You can touch-up, crop, or rotate pictures, add special effects, music, and your own narration to your photo stories. Photo Story 3 does have some limitations: it is only available for Windows XP and Vista, the stories created with the program can only be played back with Windows Media Player on PCs running Windows and not on Macs, and it only supports the used of still images, not full-motion video clips.

iMovie

iMovie is Apple's answer to Photo Story and is a good choice for for Mac users who want to create digital stories. This digital movie creation and editing program has most of the same features as Photo Story, however, it also supports the use of full-motion video clips. Like Photos Story 3, iMovie lets users add titles, effects, and transitions to their digital story projects. And like Photo Story, iMovie has some limitiations too, including: it generally just supports video clips in the .MOV format, and it is not free, although it often comes installed on new Macintosh computers.

Adobe Premiere Elements

Premiere Elements video editing software from Adobe is a scaled-down version of the more expensive and more feature-filled Adobe Premiere, a video editing software application that is used by many digital video professionals. The program is filled with just about all of the features that digital storytellers could want, however, be aware that the learning curve for Premiere Elements can be greater than for some of the other programs listed here. Premiere Elements is not free, although it often comes bundled with the purchase of some digital video camcorders and discount pricing is available for educators and students, through Adobe's online education store and other software resellers.

Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker is a video editing software application that has been included as part of the Windows operating system since 2000. This program has suffered poor reviews by users for many years because it lacked sophisticated features, but more recently, the program's capabilities and reputation have improved and many educators use it because it is readily available and generally supported by school technology services. A new version of Movie Maker is bundled with most versions of Windows Vista. One limitation of Movie Maker is that it only outputs files in the AVI and WMV formats.