We’ve discovered some terrific programs that can spark the creative spirit in children and give parents and grandparents hours of fun watching what happens:
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| StoryBird book cover |
Storybird (www.storybird.com) encourages building a story from a set of images you drag and drop onto the page and then add text to develop the story. The images are wonderful, drawn by professional artists and are mostly “open ended,” suggesting multiple interpretations. Create as many pages as you want, rearrange or edit and save.
An added value is in getting two or more children to toss ideas back and forth and collaborate on a project. They’ll have a ball doing it. Publish the story free on the Storybird website to share and have others comment on, or pay a fee and have it printed as a keepsake.
Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu) lets you create interactive stories, games, fun animation and more, all while learning some principles of logic programming by snapping together color coded blocks that represent various commands.
Commands control the actions of on-screen figures, sound, music and narration, take input from the keyboard or mouse and more. Children soon get beyond the nuts-and-bolts of programming commands to the fun of interactive story creation.
Zooburst (www.zooburst.com) lets you write stories and illustrate them with provided images, which can be assembled into a 3-D pop-up page viewed on screen. For even more fun, add pop-up text balloons or record your voice, speaking as a character when clicked or, using a webcam, include yourself surrounded by the 3-D story characters.
These are fun ways for youngsters–or adults--to create stories.
