After hearing about StoryBird this weekend at MESPA, I was excited to try it out. My initial hope was to be able to write a story about Penguins for a first and second grade classroom that was going to discuss Antarctica. However, I found some difficulties. I believe that StoryBird was intended to have people write stories give certain artwork, not vise versa. For example you can not choose an artist and get all sorts of penguin pictures. Instead you choose an artist and have to use those pictures. This caused my greatest issues. I was not able to generate pictures for the story I wanted to tell, but rather was asked to write a story given a number of pictures. No doubt StoryBird seems like a great tool for creative writing, however it was not serving the purpose I wished it to. I wonder if any others had this issue or if I was just lost in my effort to create my penguin story.
I have heard the same thing from another teacher. It appeared to them as if there was not a lot of flexibility, granted she stated that she did not spend a lot of time working through it either. It does sound like a great idea for creative writing.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear it did not meet your needs.
ReplyDeleteOne of the first grade teachers was asking me about what I assumed was an app her principal husband had on his ipad. I was really excited to see Storybird this weekend. I just spent about 20 minutes with Storybird as well! I noted the same limitation...you have to make up a story to go along with the artist pictures. I am going to try to drop in on my first grade team @ lunch on Friday and ask their opinion about this site.
ReplyDelete