Hello everyone, this week I would like to show you some digital resources to create stories and comics in class. There are several free tools that you can use with your students, but I would like to focus on just two, which are Storybird and DomoAnimate. Moreover, at the end of the post I will add a short list with other digital tools that I have been testing.
First of all, I would like
to highlight that telling stories is a powerful
way to communicate with others. Besides, if we combine this with a suitable
digital tool the result is an amazing
learning experience in which the student get involve with a higher degree of motivation.
Furthermore, it has many benefits for the students such as:
- It Develops creativity, critical thinking and problem solving abilities.
- It encourages writing and emotional literacy at the time that they express their feelings.
- They are challenging to use High Order Thinking Skills in order to create their stories.
- It develops their decision-making and their communicative skills.
- It helps the student to reflect their acquisition of knowledge and promotes independent learning.
These are just some of the
benefits of promoting this practice in the classroom. Besides, as I said before
there are many free tools to create digital stories for educational purposes,
for example:
It is a fantastic tool to
foster the students to write not only stories, but also poetry. I discover this
resource thanks to my teacher Raquel, and I was amazed since the first time
that I visit the website. It consists on make up your own books, and includes a
huge variety of illustrations that you can use. In fact, these draws can be
perfect to contextualize you poems or stories, or even to find the inspiration
to start your book. 
Apart of that you can also share you creations and printed.
It also includes the possibility for teacher to create a task or assignment
online, and the students are able to finish it at home or wherever they are
because the interface is compatible for tablets and smartphones. As far as I’m concerned, it
is the most intuitive to use and also the results are simply amazing.
It is not as artistic as
the previous tool, but it provides students much more freedom and flexibility
at the time to create their stories. Furthermore, It is has two options:
- Create a slideshows, in which you can upload some random pictures related to something that you work in class and children should create the story from it. Another way to work with this option is to let the children freedom to invent a story and then helps them to find the pictures to illustrate it.
- Domo Animation Studio, which in my opinion it is the more creative option. It has a library of backgrounds, characters, music and random animation effects to create your video story.
As I said at the beginning
of the post, here you have the link of some of the digital tools for teacher
that I like most:
- ZimmerTwins, similar to Domo Animate.
- Piclist, you choose a picture and create a sentence or a quote to accompany the image.
- Animoto, you can combine images, songs and text in a video, but the free version is only 30 second videos.
- Zooburst, to create 3D popup books (check the video in my post about technology).
- MakeBeliefsComix, to create stories out of comic strips. It is very easy to use in class.
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- Comicmaster, it is a bit more complete than the previous one.
If you want more information about digital tools, please do not hesitate to contact me.
See you in the next post!!!
