Thursday, April 5, 2012

Storybird Awesomeness...

Any of the folks that follow me regularly know that I already have a very deep love for Storybird.com.



In the last few months, the company has been putting pieces into place to deepen that love a lot. A whole lot. Teachers need to pay attention here, big time! While there are a lot of free tools on the internet, there's a lot of tools that offer super mega upgrades for minimal prices. Storybird has stepped into that zone with a paid version of their product for teachers.

Low cost and high return have always been friends in my book, and Storybird has created a low cost option of awesome with mega levels of return. I remember talking with the higher ups there a year or so ago about the realities of the economy and what teachers/districts could really afford to spend. They've totally hit a home run with their paid upgrade--I'm so impressed I'm blogging about it!

Those of you that have been in workshops with me have likely already seen what the PDF download looks like on my iPad. I've probably also shown you the printed out books from Storybird. In this age of digital devices and anytime accessibility, the digital download is where it's at, and at 34 cents apiece, you can't beat it. Storybird's options for teachers include a plan that's roughly a hundred bucks, but gives you up to 300 PDF downloads and a slew of other options including grading, student accounts, and multiple class tools.

Their service just keeps getting more and more awesome and because it's based on writing, I'm using it a lot in my work with teachers around Common Core implementations. Using the service forces some of the College and Career Readiness capacities such as attending to different audiences, tasks, purposes, and disciplines. It also demands that students be discerning in their use of the technology and offers opportunities for global conversations and interaction.

Students could use it to write narrative works, persuasive and argumentative pieces and informational text, all situated with stunning visuals and an easy to use editor that most kids can master in seconds.

If you're interested, here are my previous posts on Storybird. I just can't say enough good about them. I can say though that I've got to run--I'm playing on Storybird the rest of the evening!

New on Storybird!
Exciting Storybird News!
Storybird for Christmas...
So Easy, A Grownup Can Do It

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