Storybird (Artfull Storytelling)

What is Storybird?

Storybird is another interesting tool shared by Russell recently. It is a tool that allows you to express your imagination through a very creative way. From your Storybirds, you can turn them into short story books, play cards or greeting cards. They can be printed and shared among your friends. It is a great tool to encourage storytelling among students because it is colourful and full of pictures! Furthermore, it is free!

How it works?

First of all you need to sign up to this website. Having an account of your own allows you to save and publish your master piece. Storybird reverse the process of story telling by starting with the image and "unlocking" the story inside. You can choose you artist or a theme, get inspired and start to write your imagination into the canvas! 

Here is a video of a complete tutorial on how to use Storybird:

   

And below is an example of a finished Storybird:

Storybird in ELT:Advantages:1) A fun and exciting way to encourage storytelling among your students because they can express their creativity and imagination like a professional story book author.2) Storybird also offers a different approach to get your students engage in creating their own story by choosing a theme or pictures to get them started. It promotes a reversed process of story telling by starting with the image and "unlocking" the story inside. 3) This tool also promotes the sense of ownership and motivation. As your students create their own story, publish and share them, they may feel like a real author and feel motivated.4) You can also get the students to narrate their stories after they finished and share with the whole classroom. through this, speaking and pronunciation skills can be practiced.Disadvantages:1) Students may get carried away and fails to finish their Storybird (if assigned by teacher)2) No internet connection.

Dvolver

What is Dvolver?

Today I'm going to share a new tool that can be used in English Language Teaching (ELT). This tool is introduced by our lecturer Russell and it is called Dvolver movie maker. Dvolver is an online movie making tool that enable you to become a movie maker within minutes! It allows you to direct your own animated movie up to three scenes. You can also choose you own characters, your own scenes and create your own dialogues. All this can be done in a few easy steps and you can send your newly created movies to everyone! And the best part is, it is free!

How it works?

As I mentioned above, it only take a few easy steps to become a movie maker by using Dvolver! Follow me!

Step 1: Go to Dvolver website and be ready with your story line ideas! Now choose your movie background.

Step 2: Now you can choose your plot based on your idea of story line.

Step 3: Now you can choose your characters! Dvolver provides many characters that will definitely suits your story line. For example, I chose Ben and Nic for my movie!

Step 4: Now you can type in the characters' lines according to your own ideas. Here you can choose to add more scenes to make your movie more interesting!

Step 5: Now you can choose a background music to your movie or you can just simply add NO MUSIC if you decided to make a silent movie!

Step 6: Now it's the time to put a title to your movie and choose a design for it!

Step 7: At the end of movie making, you are able to preview your movie and send it to someone. You are a movie maker now!

Here is the example of a final product that I produced from this cool website! Check it out!

Dvolver in ELT:

Advantages:

1) The first advantage of using Dvolver in your English classroom is that it is fun! Your students will be able to enjoy learning English language using this tool because it is different from the usual classes where only papers and pencil involved. Once they found it enjoyable, this will encourage more participation from your students! More participation means more exciting your class will be!

2) Next, Dvolver provides context for the students. Contextualization in language learning is very important as it will enable the students to use language accordingly. Dvolver allows your students to choose their own context and create their own dialogue and expression based on the scenes and the characters they preferred.  Thus, it enable them to use language appropriately similar to real-life situations.

3) Dvolver may also enable your students to improve their communication skill especially when they work in pairs or groups. The discussion about making their own dialogues and movies with their friends will indirectly help them to practice and enhance their communication skill.

4) This tool also encourage creativity among your students. They are able to develop their creativity during the process of selecting the scenes, the characters and creating their own dialogues.

Disadvantages:

1) The first disadvantage of this tool is that it has limited characters, limited scenes and limited number of utterance in each dialogue's box for the characters. Therefore, it would be a bit difficult for the beginner to compress their dialogues in one box. Besides, the limitation of characters may discourage your students if the characters provided does not match theirs in mind.

2) The movies that your students produced cannot be saved for editing at a later time for a correction purpose.

3) Your students might get carried away by the technology and ignore the important instructions or information that you gives during the lesson.

Regardless all the disadvantages that you may find with Dvolver, it is still very useful tool to be used in ELT or in other classrooms. The idea of engaging students with this lively movie making tool is very much more exciting compared to the normal language class. For more information about Dvolver, just click on Russel Stannard 's website! Thank you!