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| storybird |
Recently on Twitter, I learned about
Storybird, an online story writing website that promotes digital literacy. You start by choosing an artists set of pictures or a theme of pictures and creating a story, based on which pictures you choose. I am a huge advocator of book making projects and alternatives to worksheets which motivate children to write, and this included digital literacy. So, I just had to dig in and try it! You can view my published book:
A Surprise Winter Day Birthday Party by
clicking here. The books go through a filter approval process before they are published. The artist I chose to use is
There is a demonstration video in the
Tour tab on how to use the
Create board: add text, change colors, and drag and drop in pictures for your story. There is a
Read tab which takes you to where you can read other books published for public viewing. When you create your account, you can choose a regular account (1 person), a
teacher account for a class, or a child account for under 13 years. You can sign up for free!
When writing, you can invite a collaborator to work together with you by adding their email; a beneficial feature if you have more than one student working on a book together. There is also a spot for a guardian or parent email so they see the collaboration and writing in progress. Once you publish a book, you can make your books "public or private" (invite by email address).
However, there is a catch, as I found out after publishing my story. If you want to download a PDF file of your published book, it will cost you $1.99. There are other purchase choices too for soft cover books and hard cover books ranging from $14.95- $29.95. On the positive side, it could make the perfect gift from your students for a family member or special friend. Or, you can share it for free by just posting it as a "public". If you choose the "private" viewing setting, then you can invite only certain people to view it free online by adding their email address. So, there are a variety of options!
The best part about the Storybird digital literacy story writing website, is that it just may be a technology tool to inspire your students to write, write, write!
