A network for all who teach languages to children

Storybird

(originally posted on ¡Vámonos!)

I picked up the following earlier -

which was followed by this tweet -

And being an inquisitive gal, I went and had a look.

What a brilliant tool! You're provided with a vast array of images from different artists that you can use to make story books. You just choose the images and write the story. SOOOOOO exciting!

I wrote a story - click here to read it!

I'll be writing more soon too.

And I can see pupils enjoying this too - lots of scope for description, imagination and creativity! For example, there are many monsters that could be used for physical description. There are animals for stories of the jungle and savannah and quirky characters just asking to be written about.

Not only a great tool for creating though - when you write a story you can choose to keep it private or make it public - and there are many many public stories so you need never be stuck for a story again!

Since originally writing about the wonderful STORYBIRD site, I've had good news and bad news!

The bad news is that, as the site is still in its infancy, if your story is written in a language other than English it cannot be published (ie put in the public gallery) as it cannot be moderated. As the site grows, this will change.

The good news is that you can still write stories and save them on the site, and that these can be shared via the 'Send to a friend' link. You can either send the link to friends, or you can send it to your own email address and then share the 'token'

Here's the Tweet conversation I had with @storybird

So let's keep making stories and hope that the site grows at an amazing rate!

This tool has sparked lots of interest on Twitter and I received the following comment from Storybird on my blog post -
Hi Lisa,

We're evaluating a volunteer moderation approach to help kickstart other languages (our original plan wasn't to offer Spanish for at least a year). But given the massive response we've had from non-English countries and teachers, we're trying to move this up the feature chain.

We're building out a database of possible volunteers for language moderation. If you (and anyone else) would like to consider participating, please email support [at] storybird [dot] com and we'll get in touch as we move this ahead.

Thanks much for the kind words, the tweets, and the ideas. You (and your language-endowed posse) rock!

m.

Mark said... 18 October 2009 00:02

So- I'd say - use it! The more of us that do so, the quicker the site will be able to publish us properly!

Here are the links to my Storybirds for a start! and please post yours as you make them (remember - your Storybird will be public for a very short while before the site realises it's 'foreign' then it will become private by default and the only way you can share is via the link you email!)

¿Qué voy a hacer hoy?

Los animales

¿cómo te sientes hoy?

Mis amigos muy raros

Tags: ICT, Storybird, digitalstorytelling, ideas, lisibo, literacy, primarylanguages, storytelling

Comment by Barbara on October 20, 2009 at 17:40: Hi Lisa

Great potential for us and the kids. Thanks so much for sharing!

Just a quick query. Once a story is made and saved how do you then add it to a your site? I'm guessing that if I'm logged in, I can then access my own stories and copy the link for posting?

Barbara

Comment by Lisa Stevens on October 20, 2009 at 19:52: You can only link to it on the site as far as I've worked out so far! Unless you take screen shots of all the pages and save as images. Not sure about copyright then though!

I'll update as I discover more!

Lisaxx

Comment by Lorraine on October 20, 2009 at 21:17: Thanks for sharing Lisa. We've missed your input.
Unfortunately won't have opportunity to use ethe ideas unless I get a job, but the moment i do I'll be there, they look so promising.

Comment by Lisa Stevens on October 20, 2009 at 22:04: Barbara - just received news via tweet that Storybirds will be embeddable by the end of the week!

Lorraine - thanks for your lovely comment - hope you get work soon xx

Comment by Clare Seccombe on October 20, 2009 at 22:24: Here's the link to my Storybird which I've made for my beginner KS2s - going to use it tomorrow to stimulate their independent writing http://storybird.com/books/hola/?token=6gw7mw

Clare (the aforementioned @valleseco !)

Comment by Clare Seccombe on October 20, 2009 at 22:26: 'Spose it would be more helpful if I hyperlinked it ! http://storybird.com/books/hola/?token=6gw7mw

Comment by Helen on October 23, 2009 at 11:30: Wow- these look fantastic! Will be using these!
Lorraine- Good Luck with the job hunting- what job are you looking for?
Hx

Comment by Lisa Stevens on October 23, 2009 at 19:39: Made another Storybird - http://storybird.com/books/que-tiempo-hace/?token=edtxu8 and also a story about a zoo using a tool from London Grid for Learning - here's the link to mine - http://bit.ly/4kUODs and then there's the tool http://bit.ly/25Yh8b which you can use in any language and enter your kids in a competition to win tickets to the zoo and runners up prizes of books. Worth trying any language!!