Digital storytelling is an excellent way to foster student creativity and give them authentic experiences with reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Today I’m sharing my favorite digital storytelling apps that I’ve used in my classroom. Toontastic (free) allows students to animate their own stories while practicing key story elements. The app guides them through choosing their setting, conflict, challenge, climax, and resolution. Once students are ready to record, they can move the characters around on the screen and it will record both their animations and voices as a cartoon video. Storykit (free) lets students create a digital storybook with text, audio, and photos/illustrations. Students can either upload photos from their camera roll or draw their own illustrations using the app’s drawing feature. This app has been a favorite choice during Daily 5 writing, and we’ve also used it to publish various nonfiction research projects. Book Creator ($4.99) is hands-down my favorite app for creating any kind of eBook. Students can add videos, music, and even record their voices. Book Creator has lots of color and font options as well as a pen tool to draw and annotate. We’ve used this versatile app to publish nonfiction research projects, fairy tales, how-to books, collaborative stories, and even math explanations. In the picture below, you can see how my student has embedded a YouTube video to demonstrate how wild dogs hunt. Telestory (free) allows students to create, direct, and star in their own TV shows. There are a variety of fun themes, costumes, and special effects to choose from and you can really let students run wild with their imaginations. The picture below shows one of my students recording a news broadcast for her classmates. Chatterpix (free) can make any photo talk. After uploading a photo, you simply draw a line to make a mouth and then record your voice. With this app, the possibilities are endless and can range from silly to informative. We used this last year to make characters from fairy tales talk and explain their point of view on what happened in the story. Below you can see how one of my students embedded a Chatterpix into his eBook on penguins. (I really wish I would have saved a recording of this video!) Storybird (free) is an iPad-friendly website that allows students to create stories using beautiful and intriguing artwork. Students can search by themes (or “tags”) to find and drag in pictures. Then they begin sequencing and typing their story to go along with the pictures. Even my most reluctant writers love this site because they are so fascinated by the artwork. My favorite thing about Storybird is that students can publish their books to our class account and comment on one another’s stories. Want more app recommendations? Click on any of the images below to check out dozens of apps reviewed by yours truly.:)
Digital storytelling simply means using computer-based tools to tell stories. The 5 apps below are some of my favorites for allowing kids to create, illustrate, record, and share stories and ideas. Digital storytelling is easy to do with these apps, and can be done even if you don’t have access to much technology at school. If you … Continued
Interested in some great Free Digital Storytelling Tools for teachers and students? Check 18 Free Digital Storytelling Tools for teachers and students.
Digital storytelling is an excellent way to foster student creativity and give them authentic experiences with reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Today I’m sharing my favorite digital storytelling apps that I’ve used in my classroom. Toontastic (free) allows students to animate their own stories while practicing key story elements. The app guides them through choosing their setting, conflict, challenge, climax, and resolution. Once students are ready to record, they can move the characters around on the screen and it will record both their animations and voices as a cartoon video. Storykit (free) lets students create a digital storybook with text, audio, and photos/illustrations. Students can either upload photos from their camera roll or draw their own illustrations using the app’s drawing feature. This app has been a favorite choice during Daily 5 writing, and we’ve also used it to publish various nonfiction research projects. Book Creator ($4.99) is hands-down my favorite app for creating any kind of eBook. Students can add videos, music, and even record their voices. Book Creator has lots of color and font options as well as a pen tool to draw and annotate. We’ve used this versatile app to publish nonfiction research projects, fairy tales, how-to books, collaborative stories, and even math explanations. In the picture below, you can see how my student has embedded a YouTube video to demonstrate how wild dogs hunt. Telestory (free) allows students to create, direct, and star in their own TV shows. There are a variety of fun themes, costumes, and special effects to choose from and you can really let students run wild with their imaginations. The picture below shows one of my students recording a news broadcast for her classmates. Chatterpix (free) can make any photo talk. After uploading a photo, you simply draw a line to make a mouth and then record your voice. With this app, the possibilities are endless and can range from silly to informative. We used this last year to make characters from fairy tales talk and explain their point of view on what happened in the story. Below you can see how one of my students embedded a Chatterpix into his eBook on penguins. (I really wish I would have saved a recording of this video!) Storybird (free) is an iPad-friendly website that allows students to create stories using beautiful and intriguing artwork. Students can search by themes (or “tags”) to find and drag in pictures. Then they begin sequencing and typing their story to go along with the pictures. Even my most reluctant writers love this site because they are so fascinated by the artwork. My favorite thing about Storybird is that students can publish their books to our class account and comment on one another’s stories. Want more app recommendations? Click on any of the images below to check out dozens of apps reviewed by yours truly.:)
Once upon a time, a customer had a great buying experience on a website. The customer loved how from the moment the customer was on the site to the moment they checked out a product, the process was intuitive and easy to use. The process and design of the customer experience was not by accident. In fact, it was done very methodically using story mapping. What is Story Mapping Story Mapping is both a visual practice that provides you with an understanding of how a user might use a feature and a decomposition practice that helps you consider how you may incrementally decompose an idea. Established by Jeff Patton, the visual portion helps the team understand the customer experience by imagining what the customer process might be. This promotes the team to think through elements of what the customer finds as valuable. The decomposition portion allows the team to think through a number of options which represent pieces of work (e.g. epics and user stories) on how to incrementally build the feature to gain the most feedback from the customer. This helps both validate the value of the idea and ensures the idea is being built in a way that provides the best customer experience. Benefits of Story Mapping Story Mapping is a way to bridge the gap between an idea and the incremental work ahead. It's a great way to decompose an idea to a number of unique user stories. What are some additional benefits of story mapping? It moves away from thinking of functionality first and toward the customer experience first. It provides the big picture and end-to-end view of the work ahead It's a decomposition tool from idea to multiple user stories. It asks the team to identify the highest value work from a customer perspective and where you may want the most customer feedback. It advocates cutting only one increment of work at a time instead realizing that feedback from the current increment will help shape subsequent increments. Getting started with Story Mapping How might you get started in establishing a story map? It starts by having wall space available to place the customer experience upon. Next you educate the team on the story mapping process (see below). Its best to keep to a Scrum team size (e.g., 7 +/-2), where everyone participates in the process. Then as a team, follow these high-level steps: Create the “backbone” of the story map. These are the big tasks that the users engage with. Capture the end-to-end customer experience. Start by asking “what do users do?” You may use a quiet brainstorming approach to get a number of thoughts on the wall quickly Then start adding steps that happen within each backbone. From there explore activities or options within each step. Ask, what are the specific things a customer would do here? Are there alternative things they could do? These activities may be epics and even user stories. Create the “walking skeleton”. This is where you slice a set of activities or options that can give you the minimum end-to end value of customer experience. Only cut enough work that can be completed within one to three sprints that represents customer value. As you view the wall, the horizontal access defines the flow of which you place the backbone and steps. The vertical access under each contains the activities or options represented by epics and user stories for that particular area. Use short verb/noun phrases to capture the backbones, steps, and activities (e.g. capture my address, view my order status, receive invoice). Next time your work appears to represent a customer experience, consider the story mapping tool as a way to embrace the customer perspective. Story mapping provides a valuable tool for the team to understand the big picture, while decomposing the experience to more bite size work that allows for optionality for cutting an increment of work. Its another tool in your requirements decomposition toolkit.
Learn how to use these fun, free digital storytelling tools with students in all elementary grades. Bonus: No student account creation is required!
Book Creator is a powerful tool for digital storytelling lesson integration. Access classroom ideas to turn your students into creators using multimedia technology.
How can we use technology tools to capture stories? Here's my favorite creation apps and websites to help students tell their stories.
Part 7 of "There's A Special App For That" series on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad apps for students with special needs. In this post we examine the seven building blocks of literacy instruction and look at apps that can support each area.
You know I love my job right? Good. Didn't want you to forget how much I am enjoying my time in the kindergarten room. Can I tell you th...
Digital storytelling apps help students master thinking skills, teach students to be creative within a structured space, and encourage collaboration.
Free resource of educational web tools, 21st century skills, tips and tutorials on how teachers and students integrate technology into education
Digital storytelling apps help students master thinking skills, teach students to be creative within a structured space, and encourage collaboration.
Want to start a digital scrapbook on your iPad? Here are some of the best scrapbooking apps available for iPad. These apps offer the best themes, backgrounds, and elements to help you build the scrapbook of your dreams.
Have students use Google Slides to create and publish their own ebooks! Works especially well for research books and other nonfiction pieces. Learn how to create a book with Google Slides and how to share it with others during a paperless writing celebration. Create and share digital books in the classroom with Google Slides As much as I write about iPad apps, I'm a huge Google user in and out of the classroom. I own a Chromebook and use the Google Apps such as Drive, Slides, Docs, Sheets, and Forms all the time. In fact, many of the projects we
88 Key Full-Weighted Digital Piano - The 88 key heavy hammer action keyboard simulates the acoustic piano, accurately captures the strength of your fingers and gives you a grand piano touch. It’s a good electronic piano to replace the grand piano for teaching or learning. Powerful Sound Source - The Advanced French DREAM sound source is adopted, bringing you a realistic auditory experience. 128 max polyphony and the triple pedal will help you express your feelings better. 2 Stereo Surround Speakers - 2x 25W(Maximum Power) speakers give better play to the perfect sound quality and have a stereo surround effect, and the headphone mode will help you practice without disturbing others. Fashion Appearance - Beautiful wood finish color, environmentally friendly and odorless process. DDP-80 piano is just like a simple piece of furniture, you can assemble it quickly and put it anywhere in your house. Powerful Function - DDP-80 has strong compatibility and can be connected to the teaching app on iPad and mobile phone for self-study, composition, or teaching. You can also connect the music editing software to the PC for internal records. Adapter Specifications - Input AC:100V-240V. Output DC:12 3A. Adapter Transformer DC: 5.5mm x 2.2mm.
Websites & mobile apps for digital storytelling, such as Toontastic, VoiceThread, StoryKit, Xtranormal, Puppet Pals, Pixton, Storybird, Comic Master, etc. Via Stacey Py Flynn
Comics Head gives students the power to tell their own stories and show what they know about a topic in any subject.
My Favorite Creation Apps for the Elementary Classroom
Digital storytelling is a unique and meaningful activity which incorporates writing and technology. Students will choose a personal hero and honor them by creating a narrated slide show movie about them. Using PhotoStory 3, FREE and simple software from Microsoft, students go through the few easy steps to create their project. I created this as a part of my capstone project for my Master's in Educational Technology, and I am happy to offer you this improved version. Students love to show off their projects at conferences or during open house and parents will often be brought to tears. Included in this download: * Teacher Directions * 8 Printable Student Pages - these will take students through the process of pre-writing, drafting, peer-editing, and script writing so that they are ready to create their project. * Scoring rubric Materials needed: * Windows computer with Photo Story 3 installed * Microphones * Scanner to scan photos * Copies of Student Pages for each student It is strongly encouraged that you have basic to intermediate technology skills and are comfortable with using technology. Although the PhotoStory program is simple and easy to use, it is best to practice with the software first before using it in the lesson. This download does NOT teach you how to use the software, you can locate those tutorials through the Microsoft product page. Photo Story Hero Project by Nasreen Wahid is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Here is the framework that Musk uses to captivate his audience and sell his vision Have you tried any of these tips already? Credit: Sachin…
How does the 30hands digital storytelling tool connect to formative assessment?The team at 30hands Storytelling believes in the power of creativity.
