The following iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone apps have been suggested by study group members to support and encourage student storytelling and writing:
Writers Studio
With this app, students can create multi-page books that can be viewed on the iPad or saved as a pdf and printed or emailed for viewing on a computer. Students can change font, styles and sizes and colours. The drawing features allow students to use different textures and colours. Audio can also be added to narrate the students' writing as well as music clips being created and added.
Strip Designer
With this app, students can take their own photos or import images to create a "comic strip" to tell their story. There are many strip designs to choose from. Students can take photographs of scenes that they have created with puppets, toys, etc or of objects. Captions, speech and thought bubbles can be added to tell a story or describe a process. The following is an example created with a grades 1 and 2 class and is written from the perspective of the plant.
Story Wheel
This app can be used by 1-4 "players". The students take turns spinning the story wheel. At each turn an object or scene is selected and a short animation is watched before the student records a part of a story to go with what has been viewed. It is is easy to delete a recording and try it again. There are several story themes to choose from like Pirates, Space, etc. They can play back their stories and watch the series of images as their story plays. The final versions can be saved to iBooks and viewed and listend to "off the shelf".
Toontastic
This is a storytelling app in which students create and animate scenes and then record their stories to playback and view.
Notability
This is a great app for notetaking, webbing or pre-writing experiences such as brainstorming, story mapping or BME. Students can combine and overlay drawing and word processing. As well as for pre-writing, students can write and illustrate their writing and print from the app or save the file as a pdf. The following is an example used to show students how to "map out" the sequence of story before beginning writing.
SonicPics
This app allows students to take and use their own photos and then record their description of the photos or tell a story to go with them. The students can then play back their recording as they flip through their photos.
Primary students really enjoy hearing their own voices tell a story. The storytelling apps are great experiences in developing story fluency before writing and provide starting points for students to develop their own stories.
The many drawing and writing apps available allow for students to be content creators. There are lots of different ways they can record and represent their ideas and information.
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