STORYBIRD

I have to say that I am genuinely surprised at how successful STORYBIRD has been with my 15-year old students! They are coming to the end of the year. They are lazy, unmotivated, whiny and reluctant to do almost anything I propose. I was at my last straw and I thought, ‘Let’s see if Storybird grabs their attention and keeps them quiet and me sane for at least 30 full minutes!” To my surprise, after the initial 10 minute explanation of how this tool works, they excitedly worked on their stories. They totally got into their work. After the one-hour class was finished, most of them had produced some great stories. In fact, I don’t even care if all of their stories weren’t so great. They were ENGAGED in the task, they had fun, they were writing, they were asking for vocabulary and most importantly, they were QUIET!!! It was great to see the results and have them genuinely want to save their story and make sure that it didn’t get lost. In order to facilitate the task with the time limit we had, I saved all of their stories in my account and then they invited themselves as collaborators. I’ve seen that as a teacher you can set up classes and add the students beforehand but as I mentioned, this was a last minute attempt to find something that would interest them so I didn’t have time for that. Next year, I will definitely set up different classes within my account and try to organize different themes for different groups.

Here are a couple of examples:

The saviors of the planet. on Storybird

THE CIRCUS OF HORRORS on Storybird