Social Story Creator Educators

Social Stories Creator Educators is an easy-to-use app that allows you to view and create social stories with photos, audio, and text. The idea of a "social story" was developed by Carol Gray, Director of The Gray Center for Social Learning and Understanding. Social stories are short vignettes created by a parent, teacher, or caregiver to help a child with a skill, concept, or situation that involves an emotional or social component. Examples range from activity transitions to dealing with emotions to helping students modify their behavior.

The overall goal of a social story is to give students calm, encouraging information and direction. The app includes a collection of pre-made social stories organized by categories such as Self-Care or Friendship and Feelings. Users can also create their own social stories, using the camera or camera roll, the devices's microphone, and text. Finished stories can be printed or shared with others who have the app. This pro version for educators has a flat-rate initial purchase price and no in-app purchases. There is also a free version available that includes just one pre-made story, allows users to save up to two of their own stories, and has in-app purchases for upgrades.

If you work with students with autism or expressive language issues, Social Stories Creator Educators could be especially useful to you. Teachers can create stories that emphasize visuals and sound in order to help students with their speaking and listening skills. How engaging the story is depends to a large degree on the teacher, though; it would be helpful if there were a bit more direction on how to make engrossing stories. What's helpful is that teachers have the ability to use their own images and voices -- or those of the kids themselves -- to help students better relate to the stories. If you are social story-savvy, this is a good app to use.

On the other hand, there's a pretty steep learning curve if you're new to creating social stories. While the app does come with sample stories, it gives no direction or suggestions on making your own stories. There are also few how-to supports in the app to help with navigation or allow for easy movement within the app. For example, once you've started a story, you have to progress through the whole story to exit back out to the home page. Overall, this app has an easy-to-use platform for creating social stories and some nice examples -- but it also has a high price tag.