Storyjumper:
Dave’s Fishy Adventure – Link to book created.
Cross-curricular links to PSHE, English and Art.
I really liked the editing process of the book. It allows the user to effectively customise the images in the book – using a vast range of images from the website. It was very straight forward to use, and very suited to children of all ages in order to improve Art and Literacy skills! It can also enable issues in PSHE (e.g. – Bullying) to be addressed as a whole class, however in a more personalised and relevant manner!! There is also the opportunity to purchase the book in hardback when completed! This could produce a real project for children in the class as their work could be produced for parents to see and keep – displaying achievements for all to see!
In comparison to Storybird i think the final product does not appear as high quality. But the degree to which the literacy is limited is FAR less!! It enables a pupil’s imagination to go wild!
Storybird:
Using Storybird was a fairly straightforward process. The interactive book above could be used tomorrow in a classroom in a PSHE lesson in order to promote social skills such as teamwork – showing children that most obstacles can be overcome with a little teamwork and help from friends! It also has cross-curricular links to English, helping KS1 children with their reading, writing and listening skills, however in an alternative and interactive way. For instance, children could read off an IWB as a class, or even produce a story of their own!
I did feel that the poor variety of pictures and few ways in order to edit the images could limit the stories created. It was very difficult to find pictures that matched your planned story line. The story definitely had to be planned around the choice of images provided by the Storybird illustrators. Saying this, i think that the images were of very high quality and were very appealing to the eye. They can easily enhance a child’s work, making it look significantly higher quality!!
NB: Both can be differentiated for almost all primary school year groups (Year 1+). I think it will take away from the literacy L.O if children in reception are using these programmes, as their IT skills will not be refined enough for them to concentrate fully on their literacy work.
To support this you can use games - such as character identification SMART Notebook games