Storymaker

I am always on the lookout for new digital storytelling resources. There are so many different options out there. Two web applications that we use are Kerpoof with our younger students to create storybooks and ToonDoo with the older students to create cartoon strips. Today I came across StoryMaker while perusing my Diigo notifications. It may not be new but it is one I have not seen before. It is certainly fun to use, with its predetermined drag and drop characters, scenes and props. Dialogue as well as a written story are both possible. The final product can be printed off or downloaded as a pdf. Unfortunately I couldn't find embed code for the storybook, which would have made it a real contender for the work we do with the younger students. One way around this would be to upload it to Google docs or scribd to generate the appropriate code.  On a positive note, an account is not required to use the application and download books, making it an easy tool to use with any class.

Here are a couple of pages from my first book.

Pixton Comic Strip Creator

We use ToonDoo heavily at our school for storyboarding and cartoon strip creation. As I've said in previous posts it is one of the best I've come across and has been embraced whole heartedly by both staff and students across the grades and subjects. This evening I was reading through the various posts on Classroom 2.0 and came across Pixton in one of the forums. This is a free service and an account is required. It looks very promising and I hope to introduce it to staff and students this coming school year.

A big thanks to Julie Baird for posting it.

Our Favourite Web Applications

At the beginning of the school year I held a series of small sessions with different departments aimed at introducing them to various web applications.  We looked at blogs, wikis, voicethread and at the very end as a bit of a lark, ToonDoo.

A few weeks later I was contacted by the Economics/Business Studies teacher who expressed a great interest in using ToonDoo along with the work he was doing with storyboards. We took it on and ToonDoo took off! Soon after, Spanish and French jumped on the ToonDoo train and even Art is interested in its capacity to display pieces along brief comments. What draws people to ToonDoo is the fun they can have with telling their stories, without having to deal with too much on the technical side of things. We have recently learned how to alter the body stances and facial expressions of characters as well as create ToonBooks. The only thing I think could improve further is the number of frames offered for each Doo, which forces users to create parts 1, 2, 3 etc..

The excitement is far from over, as we have now discovered GoAnimate, a web app that goes a few steps further, allowing users to create short animated films on line.  While many of the features are similar to ToonDoo, such as galleries of backgrounds, characters and props, GoAnimate stands apart allowing characters mobility, voices, background music as well as special effects my favourite of which is falling snow. It is also very 2.0ish in that users add their own graphics to the galleries, thereby generating a user created gallery shared by all!

Check out my first try below!
Link