STORYBIRD

Artful Story Telling

What is Storybird?
Storybird is a site founded in 2009 enabling anybody to

create short and art-inspired tales to share, read, and

print with an intuitive book-like interface and wide

selection of artwork. When you sign-in, you can read the

stories as books, play them like games, and send them like greeting cards. Like a game, its meant to be fun and give you hours of enjoyment.

To access this interesting technology go to

www.storybird.com .
This will take you to the homepage.

To learn more about this technology and what it does click on Learn more, this will give you a brief introduction about the site and how it is used.

 If you want to start using Storybird, you must create an account first. Go to the top left corner and click on the Sign up for free icon.

Getting started

You have to choose an account type from 3 options:

Choose a username and a password, and then an e-mail will be sent to you to confirm your e-mail address.

As a teacher, you can add your students to your account, and provide full details about the assignment on hand. In addition, you can evaluate their work electronically, and you can even give your students digital stickers.

Create your own Storybird

When you are ready to create your own Storybird, you have to choose one of 2 options:
a) Get inspired by ART
b) Explore themes

a) Get inspired by ART, where you can browse the

"story art" section from the sites list of artists, and you start a story with their pictures.

b) Explore themes, includes the ability to choose

artwork based upon a theme.

A page appears surrounded by thumbnail images. Drag and drop an image onto a page, and you can even add a text to accompany the image you chose.

You can add as many pages to your story as you like (you can even save any unfinished work and come back later to finish it).

You will soon have a story that looks professional and can be read online over and over. You may wish to keep your Storybird private, or you might share it with your class or with the Storybird community.

Using STORYBIRD in the Classroom

Storybird is considered an effective literacy tool which encourages literary exploration and new media skills. It can be ideal for use in the Language Arts classroom to read and write creative stories. It helps students starting kindergarten up till grade 12 to improve their reading and writing skills. It stimulates their imaginations as well as sparking their creativity and artsy fun.

Lesson Plan Using Storybird

Other uses of STORYBIRD in the classroom

STORYBIRD is ideal for promoting literacy across the curriculum and improving cross-curricular learning - Storybird can be used in mathematics classes, where students

can write word problems about the topic they are studying,
and share them with their classmates. - Grade 4 students learn about habitats in their science curriculum. The teacher can use Storybird to have students to write about different habitats.

Important features of Storybird for Teachers

Important features (cont)

Cost
Storybird gives you some features for free. But if you want to upgrade your account, you have to pay annual fees depending on the features that you are looking for.

Cost (cont)
Free limited features include 75 student accounts, 3

classes, assignments, class library, private environment, etc.

You have the option to upgrade the Storybird from the free version to the pro or pro+ version with annual fees, such as, feedback on unpublished stories and 1 free PDF book download per student.

Grading and Parent Collaboration

The pro and pro+ versions allow electronic grading, so the teacher can read the students stories, grade them and can

even add digital stickers to the students work.

The teachers are recommended to share the students

passwords with parents so they can access their kids

accounts and see their progress, and their final grades.

Parents can also buy students books and the money can be
used for fundraising!

Drawbacks
Although Storybird has many advantages, it also has its disadvantages: 1- students can only use the same artwork once on the page and can only use 1 artwork per page, which somehow limits their options. 2- the free version has limited features compared to the pro and pro plus version. 3- students are unable to print their stories when they finish writing them

Review of Storybird
Storybird is collaborative storytelling for family and
friends. When I first heard the tagline, I scratched my head. What is this all about? Then I got the beta tester invite. And I played on the site for hours. Days. My daughter begged, Mommy, can we make another

Storybird?
http://taralazar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/fly-away-to-storybird-land/

Review of Storybird
The content here is all greatif youre a young a child.

Keep in mind that this is a tool, rather than something

aimed at teachers. Lessons run the gamut from what to

do when faced with a bully, to how things would be if

everyone cared. There are also non-lesson-based stories

available for pure enjoyment. (Tomaszewski, 2011)

References
http://storybird.com http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/sitereviews/storybirds.shtml#.T7bS-H6Wd-o.hotmail http://taralazar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/fly-away-tostorybird-land/ http://kditzlerteacherresourcepage.wikispaces.com/Storybird http://trendingeducation.com/?p=845