Web 2.0: Storybird

One of the first of the Web 2.0 tools that caught my attention was the Storybird website. This is a collaborative storytelling page where children as well as adults can create short stories, and even work together with others to have two people's input. After I took the online tour, I was extremely excited by how easy to use the site is. After you sign up for the program, the website will give you your own personal dashboard home page. This includes unpublished stories that you have started by haven't yet finished, stories you have already published, as well as your reading list which is your own collection of stories you've read and want to have easy access to. There is also a public library on the site where all published stories can be found. When you click on a story, lots of information becomes available such as the author's name, the illustrator, the age range, and comments. When creating your own story, you have the opportunity to look through all different sorts of illustrations, and can become inspired by them to write a story. Your story can have a theme and be customized to look how you want it to. Creating stories is extremely simple. All you need to do is drag and drop illustrations and type text using your individual creativity!
Because of my major which is elementary education, I am very positive that I will have lots of opportunities to use this website in the future. Regardless of what age I end up teaching, I know that this site is user friendly for kindergartners through fifth graders. I cannot think of many better ways for students to be creative in writing stories in such a simple way in our age of rapidly growing technology. This website could be employed as an activity for the entire class, or even during free time at the students' discretion.

http://storybird.com/books/i-love-my-family/

I chose to add this link to one of the published stories on storybird.com called "I Love My Family," to allow you to see an example of a story that I thought was very sweet and great for younger children. Feel free to notice all of the details of the story that I went over that will help judge what age the story is geared toward.