Community reviews for Storybird

Love this site for creative writing and reading. You choose the artwork from the site's extensive library of images. Put them in an order that tells a story. The story comes from what you see within the artwork. Don't go into it with an idea, rather, look for the story hidden in the pictures. After discussing how different authors can use the same artwork that you choose but write totally different stories, my students challenged me to do just that. The students wrote a class story. I wrote my own using the exact same artwork. We read each other's totally different stories and had a blast comparing them!

Great tool overall. All ages and for so many applications. Building literacy skills, creativity, communication as students later present finished product. Many opportunities for extension.

Students LOVE finding art and creating their own stories. 75% prefer it over free time on the computers, which is HUGE. Students love to create their own stories, statements, and silly sentences.

I have been using this website with my students for about two years now. While many sites offer students the full creativity aspect of being an author and illustrator for a book, this one presents creative writing in a different light. They have to work from a preset collection of pictures to write their stories, which forces them to rethink the direction of the story elements in their stories. It requires them to go through each collection of pictures to see if there is a storyline that would best fit the collection of picture and see if the illustrator had a theme in mind, or decide that the collection is completely random.

Anything that gets students exciting about writing and telling stories helps them. The students I used it with most recently were in a multi-age grades 1-2 classroom. At that age, and with all the choices offered, they can spend way too much time picking out the artwork rather than putting their story into the "book."

I was first introduced to Storybird three years ago. I introduced it to my class during one of our weekly visits to the school computer lab. Even before I was done helping students navigate to the site and log in, most of my class had already figured out how to use Storybird. They quickly learned how to use the tool and started using it all the time. Some students even got permission from parents to get up earlier in the morning so they could write at home! I really like that Storybird helps students overcome one of the most challenging parts of writing narratives: where to start. Students can select from hundreds of thousands of submitted illustrations and use these as seeds for writing stories. While some educators have expressed concern that Storybird does not allow students to submit their own artwork, I think it is important to remember that Storybird is meant to help generate ideas from the artwork, not the other way around.

Storybird's mantra is to begin stories starting with the beautiful illustrations that are offered on the site. Students first select the illustrations, then put together a story. So it works best when students have an idea or outline for their story, but don't have it written word for word so they can be flexible with the images. The interface is very simple--plop in an image and write the text. But there are few options for customization of fonts and sizes.

Storybird allows students to write and share their stories online. The range of artwork available is stunning, and high quality. The tool allows teachers to set up class accounts and control privacy. The true beauty of this tool lies in the sharing, where young writers gain an audience, and followers and comments build confidence.

Storybird is a beautiful, simple, elegant tool to aid in story creation. Setting up a classroom account is simple both through the online editor and by uploading a class excel file. Students feel inspired to be creative and original in their stories and are often excited to continue working! I've found limitations/frustrations for two types of students: those who have a specific story in mind and those who have no idea! For students who have a particular story in mind, they can find the art selection to be frustrating if they cannot find an image to match their idea. For those students who are completely lost on what to write, the amount of images to choose from can become overwhelming. Storybird does not use Adobe Flash/Shockwave, so there is no worries about needing to update those players on your computers. Be aware though that there are lot of images to load for each page, so it can take a few moments if you are on a slower network with impatient students! Also, it does cost money to export as a PDF (currently $1.99), so that may be a factor if looking to print them out/have an electronic copy saved outside of the Storybird website.

My 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders love the program and write multiple stories. They even select to use the program during their free time. Students sometimes can't find a picture to illustrate the next part of their stories.