Friday, March 11, 2011

Storybird


I have heard of Storybird from a number of sources, so when my class was about to begin writing a story I looked into Storybird further and, for the most part, I liked what I saw.

Advantages:

1) Quick and Easy. Story bird allows teachers to sign up students - no email for student is required. I literally registered myself and students in about 10 minutes. Teachers can set privacy to either keep the stories private so only the class can see them or they can be public and appear on the site. Storybird was easy for students to use and all had success almost immediately. Adding, reordering and deleting pages is done easily and pictures are just dragged and dropped onto the page.

2) Storybird has lots of great artwork from which students can choose to use in their stories. This got student creativity flowing. Not one of them said that they couldn't think of any ideas for their story.

3) Lots of Publishing Options. A copy of the story can be downloaded as a pdf (fee), bought as a book (fee) or embedded on a blog, web page or wiki (for free). I placed published stories on my classroom blog to increase the size of the audience who may view the stories.

4) Great for all abilities. Reluctant writers were asking to write additional stories as was my student who is above grade level. I had kids making Storbirds at home and those who finished the first one during class time asked to write another.

Limitations:

1) Lots of artwork can be a limitation too. If I used Storybird again, I would probably make a limit on the number of characters students could include in their stories. The pictures provide for a lot of choice and as a result the kids chose a lot - too many in some cases and the story became confusing.

2) Unpublished student stories cannot be viewed unless the teacher logs in as the student, as far as I know. I would also like Storybird to include a way for the teacher to monitor student progress on Storybird without having the student publish their work first or without the teacher having to log in as the student to view the unfinished Storybird.

3) Storybird allows for asynchronous writing of stories IF students have email addresses, which mine do not.







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