This tool can be used:
(1)To create visual stories or eBooks by using the free illustrations available.
(2) Discover favourite writers in the Storybird’s free library.
(3) Manage students, issue assignments and build a library of beautiful stories using the free class tools.
(4) Connect with readers who enjoy reading your stories.
(5) Sell artwork that is used to generate thousands of stories.
The categories for the stories on Storybird include: Adventure, Animals, Diary, Dreams, Education, Family, Friends, Guides, Health, Humour, Life, Literary, Magic, Mystery, Poetry, Romance, Scary, School life and Sci-fi/Fantasy.Mellor (2012) states “Teachers may register and add learners to a virtual class, enabling them to monitor pupil activity. One great feature of Storybird is that learners aren’t required to register via an email address, making it particularly user-friendly for younger year groups”.
Subject: Digital Technologies
Year Level: F-10
Strand: Digital Technologies Processes and Production Skills
Sub Strand: Collaborating and managing.
Content Descriptions: Work with others to create and organise ideas and information using information systems, and share these with known people in safe online environments (ACTDIP006).
Elaboration: Planning and creating text, drawings and sound files to share online, for example jointly creating a photo story to illustrate a fable or fairy-tale from the Asia region or a local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community story
Link to the Resource: http://www.storybird.com
Cross-Curricular Priorities and General Capabilities:
This resource can be used to embed the three Cross-Curricular Priorities and the seven General Capabilities that include:
Cross-Curricular Priorities
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
- Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia
- Sustainability.
General Capabilities
- Literacy
- Numeracy
- Information and communication technology (ICT) capability
- Critical and creative thinking
- Personal and social capability
- Ethical understanding
- Intercultural understanding.
Link to other Learning Areas:
This resource can be used with most learning areas as it can be used for varying purposes from being a basic tool in representing student’s work to serving teachers with a great library of online books that could be used to showcase examples of active writers. It can also be used as a diagnostic, formative or summative assessment tool. An example of how this resource can be used in the following learning areas include:
English: (Year 4) Create literary texts that explore students’ own experiences and imagining (ACELT1607). Storybird can be used here to generate classroom discussions by creating a generic story and then asking the students to create an alternative ending.
Geography: (Year 1) Present findings in a range of communication forms, for example, written, oral, digital and visual, and describe the direction and location of places, using terms such as north, south, opposite, near, far (ACHGS011). This Geography content descriptor can be embedded with English. Students can create a short story as a whole class by using the terminology of “north, south, opposite, near or far” by using Storybird and the illustrations available on the website.
History: (Year 4) Stories of the First Fleet, including reasons for the journey, who travelled to Australia, and their experiences following arrival. (ACHHK079). Storybird can easily be used to allow students to create a story or a diary entry from the perspective of someone who travelled to Australia in the early 1800s.
The Arts- Media Arts: (F-Year 2) Create and present media artworks that communicate ideas and stories to an audience (ACAMAM056). Students can use Storybird to capture and sequence images and texts to create comic books that “retell familiar and traditional stories to share with the class” (ACARA, 2014).
Technologies-Digital Technologies Processes and Production Skills: (Year 5-6) Manage the creation and communication of ideas and information including online collaborative projects, applying agreed ethical, social and technical protocols (ACTDIP022). Storybird can be used as an online communication tool that allows students to create stories and share them in a safe collaborative online environment.
Health and Physical Education and Languages: (Year 3-4) Describe how respect, empathy and valuing difference can positively influence relationships (ACPPS037). Storybird can be used to allow students to predict and reflect on how others might feel in a range of challenging situations in the form of a short story.
A classroom activity using this resource:
An example of a classroom activity using Storybird could be in a year four History lesson. Students in year four are expected to cover stories of the First Fleet, including reasons for the journey, who travelled to Australia, and their experiences following arrival (ACHHK079). The teacher can ask students to brainstorm ideas for writing a short story from the perspective of a convict on one of the ships of the First Fleet. They can brainstorm how they feel, what are their future expectations, what were they convicted of and a description of the surroundings around them in the ship.
When students have generated enough ideas, they can use Storybird to draft a short story with the aid of the illustrations available for them to use. The teacher can print each draft out and allow the students to edit it, share their stories with their peers and rewrite it in a good copy. Once they have completed the writing task, the teacher can use Storybird to allow students to view each other’s work. This can also be used as a summative assessment tool.
How to use this resource:
- Go to storybird.com
- Choose the ‘write’ tab.
- You can either click on an image or use the artwork tags to find a specific illustration.
- Once you have chosen an illustration, you have three options: Use this illustration for a (i) Long form Book (multi-chapter), (ii) Picture Book (multi-page) or (iii) Poem (single image).
- If you select Picture Book this is what you see:
- You can then customise the cover and the pages by adding text and selecting the appropriate image.
- Save and Publish or Download as PDF and Print.
“Storybird can be used by all ages, for all different subjects… Students can rewrite a classic… explain a science concept or retell a historical event. You can team students up to collaborate… As you can see, the sky is the limit with Storybird…. just let the creativity happen and their voices be heard.”
Shannon Miller (K-12 District Teacher Librarian at Van Meter Community School).
This is an example of a published story on Storybird.
Reference:
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2014). The Australian curriculum: The Arts. http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/the-arts/media-arts/curriculum/f-10?layout=1
Mellor, L. (2012). 10 free online tools for teaching and learning. http://www.alphr.com/features/372979/10-free-online-tools-for-teaching-and-learning/page/0/2
StoryBird. (2012). What is Storybird? http://help.storybird.com/customer/portal/articles/827771