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App review by Amanda Bindel, Common Sense Education | Updated July 2013
Kid In Story Book Maker

Kid in Story Book Maker

Easy-to-make personalized stories can help boost social skills

Learning rating
See full review
Community rating
Based on 2 reviews
Privacy rating
66%| Warning Expert evaluation by Common Sense
Grades
Pre-K–1
Subjects & Skills
English Language Arts, Communication & Collaboration, Creativity
Great for
Instructional Design, Special Needs, Media Literacy, Creating Media
Platforms:  iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
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Pros: Impressive green-screen technology extracts kid's image from the background.

Cons: Only a few templates currently available, but developer promises more.

Bottom Line: A must-have story creation tool for teachers in special-needs settings.

How Can I Teach with This Tool?

Occupational therapists, speech therapists, and teachers can create social stories for kids featuring kids they are working with, to help kids prepare for new situations or adapt to a routine. Kids can easily create their own stories, too, using pictures of themselves. The templates currently on the app include: Faces iMake, Let's Get a Haircut, What Will I See in San Francisco?, Are Monsters Hiding in My Room?, On the Playground, When Is It Time to Wash My Hands?, and A Day at the Movies. The developer promises more templates to come.

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Put this tool into practice:
Standards:

Kid in Story Book Maker is a storytelling app for iOS that includes several template stories where teachers, therapists, parents, or older kids can add their image right into the story. With the impressive green-screen technology, it's easy to extract a person's image from a photo and eliminate the background, so just the picture of a person can be dropped into the scenes in the book. Teachers or therapists can create custom books from scratch using their own images and words, or they can add a kid's image into existing social story templates. Add your own text and record your voice, as well. The developers also have a free reader app available, so you can share the books with others for at-home reading too.

Though many storybook creation apps exist, Kid in Story Book Maker is unique. Even with a relatively hefty price tag, its social story focus makes it a valuable asset for kids, especially those with special needs who require extra help with social or communication skills. A video tutorial shows exactly how to use the tool, which is so easy to manipulate that kids will quickly be able to create their own stories and insert themselves or their friends into them. The green-screen technology that finds the person within the picture and extracts him or her is pretty impressive. Even if it's wrong at first, it's easy to change the parameters to extract only the person's image from the background. Kids can easily share their storybooks, too, even with friends and family who do not buy the app, since there is a free reader available for download. Ways to use Kid in Story Book Maker are limitless -- from creating stories to prepare kids for new situations, to describing emotions using text and images (or spoken word) in therapeutic settings, to creating stories on any topic in any class.

Overall Rating
Engagement

What's more exciting to kids than reading stories or publishing their own? Starring in those stories!

Pedagogy

Creating social stories allows kids to see themselves in different situations before they encounter them, which may ease anxiety. This approach can be very successful with kids on the autism spectrum.

Support

Easy-to-follow tutorial video shows kids, parents, and teachers how to create or alter stories.

Common Sense reviewer
Amanda Bindel Classroom teacher
See how we rate and review

Key Standards Supported

Reading Literature

  • RL.K.9

    With prompting and support, compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in familiar stories.

  • RL.1.7

    Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.

Speaking & Listening

  • SL.K.1

    Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.

  • SL.1.1

    Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 1 topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.

Writing

  • W.K.1

    Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose opinion pieces in which they tell a reader the topic or the name of the book they are writing about and state an opinion or preference about the topic or book (e.g., My favorite book is...).

  • W.1.1

    Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or name the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure.

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Community Rating

(See all 2 reviews) (2 reviews)
Featured review by
Lyndsey G. , Other
Other
Great way to get students excited about writing!
This is a great way to get students excited about literacy and writing in general. They get to write a story, be involved in the process and it scaffolds to meet all needs. The pictures were so fun and inviting.
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Data Safety
How safe is this product?
Unclear whether this product supports interactions between trusted users.
Personal information can be not displayed publicly.
Unclear whether user-created content is filtered for personal information before being made publicly visible.
Data Rights
What rights do I have to the data?
Users can create or upload content.
Processes to access or review user data are available.
Processes to modify data are available for authorized users.
Ads & Tracking
Are there advertisements or tracking?
Personal information is not shared for third-party marketing.
Traditional or contextual advertisements are not displayed.
Personalised advertising is displayed.

Continue reading about this tool's privacy practices, including data collection, sharing, and security.

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