Digital Storytelling
1. Brief Reviews
1) Storybird
Writing needs a lot of efforts. Without any specfic motivation provided few people decided to write something. Then how about trying "Storybird" ? Once you look around all about "Storybird", writing will become really something to you. Varieties quality artworks are really eyecathing from the first sight and user-friendly method in creating stories will have you more focus on inventing and writing stories. How does it work ? Very simple ! Only thing you need is just to select a set of artwork and drag the images of your choice into the storyboard and fill the text box with whatever contents you want. The artwork inventory is abundant enough for writers not to have limitations in selection. Depending on the tone of artwork the genres of your writing can be varied i.e. comedy, romance, drama, fantasy, etc..
2) Comic Master
Most children in the world are being brought up with comic books. They love comics. The Comic Master will provide chances to be a real comic writer with you but in rather action-involving and dynamic style. Girls may not be the fan. Just by simply clikcing and dragging characters, background, thoght or speech box, properties, etc., you can make a real cartoon. Everything is in your choice and thus you are literally the master of comics in "Comic Master". Additionally the sound effects of menu button or MP3 functions can increase user pleasure. The choices on the menu, however, are limited only a few and if for writers aiming for variety graphics might be disappointed.
2. How could thses tools be used by teachers and students ? How could thy be incorporated into a class ?
1) Storybird
Writing is not an easy task to every language learner. They are pushed to produce something in writing but mostly the ways of pushing are not effective to stimulate learner motivation. For teachers who need a unique tool to motivate learners to write, Storybird could be a big help but only requires minimal on teacher preparations since most web structures for creating stories are provided with default. For students this will be a good source for increasing writing ability and boosting their creativeness. They can experience joy of writing in Storybird.
The teahcer could give writing tasks covering all different proficiency levels of learners which means tailored way of teaching is available. For example lower level students will be given simple sentence writings with placig the artworks in logical sequence. For higher level students, however, more complex type assignment could be given such as stories having a formal literature flow, beginning - development - crisis - climax - ending. Also collaboration works will be recommendable since a teacher can manage max. 30 accounts. Under the same theme each team can create different stories or each team can select the theme freely. Or retelling of existing well-known stories is recommendable. For example, traditional fairy tale like "Snow White" can be retold with totally different characters and story line, which could raise students' imagination and creativeness.
2) Comic Master
It is really fun to use this. Very easy to use and thus it is great for young learners. As this is a cartoon builder, only a few words or simple sentences can create a work. Therefore learners with lower writing proficiency could be more confident while experiencing creating a cartoon filling in speech bubbles with just one or two words. This will act as a wonderful writing starter for students.
Teachers, however, need to be careful in keeping this tool as a medium for using languages. If not well-instructed, students might focus on cartoon creation while neglecting story writing and using only simple exclamations or echoic words such as Oh~, boom, bang, etc.. To avoid this, how about giving a specific theme first ? For example, students could be asked to create a scene having conversation on dinner menu. Or they can be guided to include at least three full sentences or target vocabularies of the class.
In common the above tools may be used as complementary to main classroom activities or as sources for self-study.
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