Story Buddy 2 Lite
What's Appening?
How it works
Story Buddy 2 Lite is an app for the iPad. The app allows students to create a document in story format to summarize their understanding of a topic. Using Story Buddy 2 students can type or speak, add pictures, and add other effects such as a border and background. They can create, read, and share multipage stories that are unique and student designed. They can draw directly on the iPads’s screen with their finger and create their very own picture book, page by page.
Great for encouraging writing!
How to use it in the classroom:
- Students could use this as an option for writing assignments. It makes the writing process a little more interactive and students could add sound effects and pictures that interest them. In regards to writing the app also sefl corrects spelling and offers predictive software. It also provide an option to record, so students could read what they have wrote and see if it makes sense. Also, it is a great tool to use to encourage the editing process. Students can review their story or peer edit other students’ stories. They could record their comments and save them so that the “author” could listen to their classmate’s suggestions.
- Also, the teacher could use this as an informal assessment tool. Students could pass the iPad around and students could explain how they answered a math question or respond to something they read. The teacher could review it and receive feedback from the students and evaluate strengths and weaknesses.
- Another idea is that the teacher could use this app for sequencing activities. The teacher could create a story based on a common text students are familiar with. Then, the teacher could arrange the slides out of order and have students put the events/ story in the correct sequence to check for understanding. Again, students could record themselves reading and the teacher could evaluate their fluency.
Benefits to Individuals with Disabilities
- Inability to use muscles that are required for writing for a long period of time.
- Difficulty controlling muscles
Benefits: The student could sustain strength by using the audio recording tool on this app to tell their story verbally rather than write it. However if the impairment is mild the student could use the texting tool to aid their writing.
Visual Impairment Characteristics:
- Partial blindness
Benefits: The teacher could provide a story through the App but increase the text size to accommodate the visual impairment.
Other Health Impairment Characteristics:
- Limited strength, vitality or alertness
Benefits: The student could sustain strength by using this tool for writing rather then writing out their story on paper. It could also promote alertness because it is engaging to work with and use.
Benefits to Individuals with Disabilities
Specific Learning Disability (Reading and Writing) Characteristics:
- Difficulty using phonics.
- Problems reading multi-syllable words.
- Slow reading rate and/or difficulty adjusting speed to the nature of the reading task.
- Difficulty with comprehension and retention of material that is read, but not with material presented orally.
- Frequent spelling errors, inconsistent spelling, letter reversals.
- Difficulty copying from board or overhead.
- Poorly formed letters, difficulty with spacing, capitals, and punctuation.
Benefits: The teacher could provide stories with audio for students to listen too. The child could participate in creating stories by recording their own voice for what they want their story to say and create pictures that align with what they say.
Achieving Individual Goals
This App would be useful for student to use to achieve reading, writing or speaking goals.
- Students could use this App to work toward writing goals by creating texts.
- Students could use this App to work toward reading/speaking goals by practicing and recording reading a variety of texts.