Storybird for Educators
Overview
Storybird is a wonderful web tool for creative writing. Students select artwork to help guide their stories. This site can be used with a whole class, small group, partners, or individually. Students can also spend time reading the public stories or stories submitted to their class library.
Signing up for an account
Click on “Sign up for Free” to create your account.
There are 3 choices when signing up for an account:
For a teacher/class account, select teacher/class. Fill out the information and then click on “Create Account.” Be sure that you do not use your full name in your user name.
Then, fill out the rest of your information for your class:
Next, Storybird will ask you if you want to upload an avatar. If you have a picture saved on your computer that you want to use as your avatar, you can upload it now. (You can always do this later).
After this step, Storybird will ask you what type of account you want. You can choose the paid or free account.
For this guide, I chose the free account for my class. After I selected “Free User,” Storybird took me to my feed. There is a menu at the top that says “You, Create, Explore.”
If I click on “You,” there are different choices.
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If I click on my dashboard, this is what I will see:
Click on “Public Profile” to see your teacher account public profile. Please note: *Your student class accounts will not have a public profile.* |
Explore
Once you are logged in, if you click on Explore in the top menu, you will see many options.
On the left side there is a menu. This menu is helpful for those who want to search for stories that have been published in the public Storybird gallery. You have the ability to check out featured stories, authors, and storyspotters. You can also check out stories that are new & noted, spotted, popular, active, and recent. There are a few writing competitions that users can check out as well. |
Also, on the left side are links to books that have been classified as a specific type of writing. Books have also been classified by age. |
Storybird has links to their blog and Twitter feed. |
Create
Click on “Create” to start searching for art to use in your story.
If you see art that you would like to use on this page, just click on the art.
It will then give you more information about the author and a choice to use the art.
Ways to search for art:
Click on tagged art | |
Search | Type in the search box. When I typed in animals, Storybird found 311 results for my word. |
I can click on “Use this Art” to start my story.
I will then need to click on “For a Story.”
You can add new pages, drag your art to each page, and type your story. You also have a design choice for your book cover. Once I click on “Use this Art,” a canvas will open up so I can start writing.
There are three choices when working in the canvas.
You can invite another collaborator, publish your story, or save it and come back another time.
If you choose Publish, there is some information you will need to fill out about your story before submitting it. Since you have a teacher account, your stories can be made public or private. Student stories in your class are automatically made private.
Once you have published a story, you can always make changes to it. Once it is published, you should be able to see an icon that looks like a gear for additional options:
Following/Follower Feature
In Storybird, authors can follow each other. I can follow certain authors on Storybird, and I will be informed with their latest stories in my feed. Their recent books and books they have reposted show up in my feed when I am logged in.
Reading Stories
When you find a story to read (you can do this by choosing the “Explore” option in the top menu), you will see several icons that are under the story. After you read the story, you have options to repost, add your reaction, comment, share the story with others, and add to your reading list.
Setting up Student Accounts
Please note:
Because student accounts can be transferred over to another teacher the next school year, check with your school to see if there is a specific username and password that you should use before creating your student accounts. There is an option in the settings where you can e-mail students to their new teacher if their new teacher has a Storybird account.
Click on “Students” to set up your class.
When you set up your class, you need to make up a username for each child. Be sure that the student’s full name is NOT used in their user name.
The Storybird site will automatically generate passwords for your students. I would suggest printing these out with your student user names. When the students sign in for the first time, they will need to change their password. When I have a new class, I print out the list and cut out the user names/passwords for the students. Have students bring their assignment notebooks or a spiral with them to the computer lab when logging into Storybird for the first time. They will be changing their password and will need to remember their new one. If your district has specific usernames and passwords they would like you to use, you can change the password and type in the new password. If you would like to change their password, click on the key.
What the student will see after logging in for the first time if you do not change the password for them:
Once you have added your students, they will start generating in a list.
You are able to view this by clicking on “Home.”
The list of students will show up on the bottom of this Home screen.
On the right there is a “Detailed View” screen, which allows you to view when the student last logged in and how many visits to the site they have had. There are also options to delete the student username, change their password, or change the student name.
Here is an example of the detailed view:
Class Library
Once students publish stories, they will start to build in the class library. This is a private class library where only the teacher and students can view and comment on the stories.
Creating Assignments
Click on the assignment tab.
You can add information about an assignment. You can give requirements and add a due date.
Moderating Comments
If you would like to moderate the comments that your students post on each other’s work, you need to change the settings. The settings default to non-moderated comments, so you will need to change this right away if you want to approve student comments.
Under your class menu, click on Settings.
Click on “Comments.”
Click on “Moderated” and then click on “Update.”
Discussion Board
The discussion board is on by default. If you want to turn it off, be sure to go to the settings and click on turn off. There are no notifications when students add comments on the discussion board.
Turn off the discussion board by going to Settings:
Then click on the Discussions tab:
Then turn off the discussion board and click “update.”
Moving Students to a New Teacher the Following Year
In the classes menu, click on the “Students” tab
Click on “Move students.”
Select and move students by adding the teacher’s email. **The new teacher must already have a Storybird account set up to be able to move the student to the new class.**
Happy Storybirding.
Questions?
Megan Ryder
Twitter- @MrsRyder58