Continuing to Learn with the iPad- Storytelling

In an attempt to document the trials and errors of using a classroom set of 20 iPads in our K-8 school, I am adding a new post to the collection of iPads in the Classroom:

• Transliteracy- QR Codes and Art
• Working on iPad Fluency with Lower Elementary Students
• Step-by-Step: How to Create a Collaborative Class eBook
• Students Create ePub iPad Book for the World
• Finally! A Book Creator App
• Plan, Do and Review iPad Exploration (by Andrea Hernandez)
• ShowMe App for the iPad- Good Tutorial Designer App?

5th Grade- Storykit- Creating a story in Hebrew

One of the Hebrew teachers approached me with an interest in having her students create a story book in the target language on the iPads.

We chose to test the free app Storykit with this project.

Students read a poem by Leah Goldberg called: (That’s Not Me). Based on the poem, students wrote their own story and created a storyboard how they could illustrate their story.

We had the Hebrew letters added to the iPad keyboard by going into: Settings> General>  Keyboard> International Keyboards>Add New Keyboard> Choose Hebrew

Once the International keyboard is added, a globe appears on your keyboard. Tap the button to cycle through all the different keyboards you have installed.

Once the storyboards were finished, students were ready to work with the iPads. The app allowed users to create their own illustrations, import images from elsewhere or take photos with the built in iPad2 camera and insert them into their story. Students could also add audio recordings to their story.

I showed students how to go to Microsoft Office ClipArt, search for images and download or take a screenshot and edit the image.

Students also used each other to stage scenes from their story to take a photo.

Problems we found along the way:

• students could not re-order the pages of their story in order to imitate leafing/swiping through a book from “right to left” (opposite from the way we turn pages in books in English).
• students were not able to place punctuation at the end of a sentence, since the Hebrew keyboard in Storykit (maybe because it is an iPhone, not an iPad app) does not include a period.

Once the stories were completed, students

• shared (tap share button) their story
• emailed themselves the story link
• went to their emails to click on the generated URL
• took a screenshot of their story pages
• wrote a blog post about their experience
• inserted the story pages into their blog post

I will probably not use the Storykit again, since I want to be able to easily embed the stories on the student blogfolios, as well as export them into our school iBook library.

Take a look at some student samples.

Sarah’s Story

A blog post from Sarah, one of the 5th grade students:

Today in Hebrew class we made a story on an app called StoryKit. We made this on the IPads. My story is called , or in English the name is: It’s Not Me. Our Fifth Grade Hebrew teacher, Morah Liat read us a story about a boy who is acting bad, but is usually a good child. Everyone had to make a story based on that one. Typing in Hebrew on the IPads is very tricky. In English the words go left to right, but in Hebrew the words go right to left. That makes deleting letters difficult. I  spent a lot of time on this Story.

Sydney’s Story

Rachel’s Story