Revisiting Storybird

Tonight I came across a wonderful Blog called Kleinspiration.  The author, Erin Klein, recently had an article published in the Classroom 2.0 Book Project.  Her article, Digital Writer's Workshop, was about troubleshooting through collaboration and reflection when using digital writing tools in the classroom.  One of the tools she discussed using was Storybird.

I introduced Storybird to my second graders this year (click here and here for previous posts) and found they were really excited about creating stories using this tool in the beginning but that their excitement fizzled rather quickly.  Many of  my really motivated writers did not even complete their Storybird writing projects leading me to believe the tool wasn't appropriate for such young children.  After reading Erin's article I am newly inspired and ready to try again this coming fall.  She suggested having students write first and then use Storybird to publish.  When I introduced Storybird to my kiddos this past year they chose illustrations first and then tried to create a story based on those illustrations.  This was REALLY HARD for them because writing fiction is CHALLENGING for 7 and 8 year olds.  My students were also trying to create their stories using Mini Dells.  This was a challenge because the screens were so small!

My new plan is to introduce the website to my students at the beginning of the school year by showing them some stories that I have written and sharing my writing process (Erin's suggestion).  After we build up a collection of shared writing we will work together to publish a few of our writing pieces using Storybird. I have a feeling this is going to work much better. I will post in more detail once we begin our writing journey this fall!