Writing has always been a challenging and an overwhelming task for the children. The interactive and fun way of doing this can make it a more positive experience and encourage them to write again.It’s a good way to focus on the sentence structure and how well the children choose their words. It also helps to use multimedia tools efficiently and improve creativity in writing and take it to a new level.

Writeboard is web based document that you can work collaboratively and save your edits, roll on back to any version to compare changes. You can use it alone or with others. You name your writeboard, assign a password to it and mail it others so that you want to collaborate on it. Teacher can provide the first sentence of a story and children can write the rest of the story collaboratively using this tool.Before writing a story or doing a storytelling project, they can brainstorm ideas using this tool.

OurStory is a tool to make your timeline by writing your stories and adding pictures, videos and text. You can send it others via mail or share it on different social networking sites. Children can create a timeline of someone famous, they can create timeline for a story that they have read or they can create timelines for historical events.

This blog or the author are not responsible for any inappropriate images/text/ads of the external links. Please double check before you use it with your students.

Digital storytelling is an exciting medium of telling your stories using a variety of digital tools. Using pictures to create your digital stories is another great way to get together, collaborate with each other and increase the community in a classroom. There are many free tools online that can turn our photos into digital stories to express ourselves, accelerate learning and create a space for our students to boost their creativity.

Animation tools are great for imaginative narrative expression and creating a learner-centered environment for collaborative and cross-curricular learning. There are many free animation tools to tell your stories in a fun and an interesting way. Like other tools, they are great sources to engage our students into their own learning, encourage problem solving/technology skills and facilitate learning.

With the coming of the 21st century, technology has added a new twist to our traditional storytelling. Beyond the scope of pen and pencil, we can now easily tell and share our stories digitally with mobile phones, flip cameras, recording our voice or using free web tools. There is no doubt that today’s students are more motivated and interested in using digital storytelling just like any other multimedia. It offers us, educators, a new and a very 21st century way to captivate students’ attention, facilitate learning, reach shy students and increase collaboration and community in a classroom. It’s a great way to give voice to ourselves and our students in an out of the classroom walls.

Audio Tools:

Vocaroo is a tool that lets you record your voice immediately and get a link for it. You don’t need to download any software or get an account  for  this tool. It’s the easiest tool for recording voice. Children can tell/retell a story by  recording their voices and sharing it with others.

Voxopop is a web-based audio tool. You can consider this tool as a message board that uses voice instead of text. You create a talk group and share it with others and let them record their voices on the same timeline.  Children can create a chain story by recording their voices on the same timeline.

Voicethread is a site to create collaborative and multimedia slides that you can navigate and leave comments for. Each slide can hold images, videos or documents such as PDF, Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Word documents that can be commented by the people you choose to share your Voicethread.  Children can create a collaborative story by adding their own pictures or drawings and recording their voices.

Voki is a tool to create speaking avatars with your own voice. You choose your  avatar; you customize it by changing the hair, clothing, bling and the colour of the hair, eyes and skin. When you finish, you give your avatar a voice by recording your voice by phone or using a microphone. You can also upload an audio file or you  can  use text-to-speech feature to convert your text into speech choosing the gender and the accent. When you finish, you can get a link or the embed code to publish it on your blog or your website. Children can tell their stories by recording their voices or they can retell a traditional story with a different ending.

BubbleJoy is a tool to create and customize video greeting sites. You don’t need to download anything or get an account. All you need is a camera. You choose your message card and record yourself using your web cam and send it others via mail.Children can record themselves while telling/retelling a story that goes with the frame that they are using.

Fotobabble is  a tool to record your voice for pictures. You upload your picture, record your voice using your  microphone and publish it online. You can get a link or an embed code to place it on your blog/website.  Children can record their voices telling a short story or a poem about a picture or they can listen a fotobabble story and talk/write about their favourite part.

Jing is a tool to take a picture or make a video of what you see on your computer screen and share it online instantly via mail, web or by saving it on your desktop. Children can record their voices for the presentations that they have prepared or they can get a picture, talk about it and create a story for this picture.

This blog or the author are not responsible for any inappropriate images/text/ads of the external links. Please double check before you use it with your students.