Cool Tools Final Take!

This week I went with something under the Story Telling Tools. The one I choose is called Storybird.
This is a Google Chrome app that is free and you just add it to the apps we all already have on our Google Chrome accounts. The nice thing about this is its right on your computer and since we all had to make Google accounts for the class, we already have a Google Chrome account.

This app is really cool because, as a teacher, you can create your classroom and invite your kids to the classroom. For example I created a classroom called "Miss Lehman's Classroom" and from there I was able to add all of my "students" to that class so that they could see story that have been created by other people on the site, by their teacher, or other classmates.

The way this site works is that you start with the picture rather than the story. You then use the picture to create your story. This can either be a long book (chapter book), short book (picture book), or a poem. I started to make a picture book and it is super easy. All you really have to do is pic the picture and then the text box is right there. It is kind of like a slideshow in the fact that you just keep adding sides for however many pages you want your book to be.

I think this is a great online tool for kids to use. Especially in second-fifth grade. The students are able to create things of their own an use all of their creativity to do that. If I were teaching a third or fourth grade class I might make this a bigger project and have the students take a few months to create a chapter book on this site. I think that would be a great way to see what their imaginations are capable of and see where they take it.

I would really love to use this type of activity in my classroom as a teacher. One of the reasons I love this is because you can take it anywhere. All you need to do is sign on a computer and your work is right there for you to continue to work on.

From what I could tell the app was pretty easy to navigate. I may have to do a tutorial to really show the kids what to do with this and let them play around with it for a while before they fully understand how to work it. However, I think that it could be something really beneficial for both them and I.