By
Tri Hari Nurdi
Storybird is one of digital storytelling websites
providing various free collection of art (Storybird, n.d.). It was established
in 2009 and developed by Mark Ury. The website provides 19 theme categories
which are closely related to real-life experience such as Adventure, Animals,
Diary, Dreams, Education, Family, Friends, Guides, Health, Humor, Life,
Literary, Magic, Mistery, Poetry, Romance, Scary, School Life, and Sci-Fi. Once
the art is chosen, students are able to create their own stories by dragging
and dropping pictures and writing a story to match the pictures chosen. Moreover,
Storybird embodies three ideas in learning: creating (writing), reading, and
sharing.
Storybird has five kinds of identifications,
‘Regular Users’ is an account for kids and adults, ’Educator/ Teacher’ is for
teachers and principal at school, ‘Student’ is an account for the students
whose class/ school is doing the website, and ‘Professional Writer &
Artist’ is an account for people who write or do art professionally. A recent
study conducted by Kuo et al. (2012) shows that Storybird is an effective
website for promoting Chinese young EFL learners’ writing skills. Kuo et al.
states that Storybird strongly emphasizes reading others’ digital storybook as
the input and encourage an image-first and text-next approach as the output. In
contrast with the other digital storytelling formats which adopts text-first
and image-next approach, Storybird adopts image-first and text-next approach
(Kuo et al., 2012).
1.
Teaching
Writing
A
half a century ago, the focus of teaching writing was on the product instead of
the process (Brown, 2001). Writing teachers emphasize the final product of
writing: essays, reports, stories, narratives produced by the students. Writing
compositions should consider some requirements: (1) meet the standard of
prescribed English rhetorical style, (2) reflect accurate grammar, and (3) be
organized with conformity. Students’ final product is measured based on a list
of criteria that include content, organization, vocabulary use, grammatical
use, and mechanical considerations such as spelling and punctuation (Brown,
2001).
However,
Brown believes that there is nothing inherently wrong with the criteria. As the
teaching of writing develops, students get more advantage when they are seen as
the creators of language, when they are allowed to focus on content and
message, and when their intrinsic motive is put as the center of the learning. According
to Shih (as cited in Brown, 2001) a new approach of writing termed as the
process approach to writing instruction has been developed. Nine steps of
process approach to writing instruction concern with: writing as a process that
leads to the final written product, helping students to understand their
composition process, helping the to build repertoires of strategies for
prewriting, drafting, and rewriting, giving them time to write and rewrite,
focusing on the process of revision, helping them discover what they want to
say as they write, giving feedback throughout the composing process, encouraging
feedback from both teachers and peers, and focusing on individual conferences
between teachers and students during the process of composing. Thus, the
process of writing must be applied in the perspective of the equality of
process and product, rather than focusing merely on the product. Writing
teachers should pay more attention to not emphasize to the process and diminish
the product. The product is the ultimate goal of writing process which is
gained throughout prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. Thus, both
process and product should be applied equally in teaching writing.
Seow
in ‘The Writing Process and Process Writing’ (2002) claims that there are five
elements which writing teachers may like to concern in implementing the process
of writing. Firstly, teachers model the writing process and teach specific
writing strategies through meaningful classroom activities. Secondly, writing
teachers help guide students to understand what kind of product is expected at
each stage of their writing process. Thirdly, teachers teach process skills
appropriate to a writing stage which include planning, drafting, responding,
revising, and editing. Process skills can be systematically taught each time
until students develop those skills over a period of time. Fourthly, teachers
should implement flexible program to provide students’ needs. Teachers need to
group them based on their developmental stage in writing. Finally, many
word-processing programs and writing websites are user-friendly enough for
students to work with for the purpose of drafting, revising, and editing. The
teachers can teach the students to respond or edit via the computer as well as
finalizing their work by publishing their writing on a writing website.
2.
Teaching
Writing with Storybird
Frazel (as cited in Hack and Helwa, 2014) divides
the process of teaching writing with digital storytelling into three stages:
preparation, production, and presentation. These three stages of teaching
writing with digital storytelling can be adopted in teaching writing with
Storybird. These processes take long time, and teachers may apply assessments
throughout the development of the writing process.
2.1.
Preparation stage
Teacher asks students to select a topic for their
stories, develop a concept map, generate storyboards, and create a script for
written text or narration. Teacher’s role in this stage is to help guide
students throughout the process by providing a formative assessment rubric.
Teacher may choose or create an introductory digital storytelling about a
certain topic and have students to brainstorm their ideas on the topic given. In
addition, in this stage, students write, rewrite, and continue the writing
process through multiple drafts.
2.2.
Production stage
When the storyboard, the formative assessment rubric,
and a partial script are in place, the students begin the production work.
Students select some images represent their stories in Storybird. Hack and
Helwa (2014) state that writing in digital storytelling must be clear, concise,
and precise in order to assure that the message is well understood by the
readers. Consequently, students as digital storytellers will have to rewrite
and rebuild the stories and assemble the images to illustrate the stories in
order to contribute to the meaning of the story, rather than making the stories
more interesting. Thus, through Storybird, students begin to comprehend how the
elements of writing work together and how to use the image to contribute to the
meaning of the stories.
2.3.
Presentation stage
In the final stage, students publish their stories
to get formative feedback and suggestions from their peers. By giving feedback
and suggestions, students are actively engaged in the exchange of ideas and
expressing their opinions, in asking and receiving feedback. Moreover, by publishing
their stories online, students actively participate in the critique with their
peers. Thus, the sharing and evaluating stories among peers is an effective way
to foster students’ self-expression and motivation in writing (Malita as cited
in Hack and Helwa, 2014).
3.
How
it works
3.1.Adding/Inviting Students
Below is a screenshot of what the
Storybird website will look like when we choose the Add or Invite Students
button. In order to get the screen below we have to go to the Studio tab at the
top of the screen. Under the Studio
tab we will find the Add or Invite Students button. Once you click
the button the screen below will appear. The website offers two different ways
to add class. Option 1 allows us to add every student individually. If we chose
this option we will actually be creating each students account for them. Option
2 on the right provides an access code to give each student in the class. The
students will have to create their own accounts and then login to enter the
access code to join the class.
The
picture is a screenshot from storybird.com
The following is a screenshot of what the website will look like
when we choose to create an assignment. The assignment section is located under
the Studio tab.
The picture is a
screenshot from storybird.com
After inviting or adding all of the students to the class, we can
star sharing stories with them, following their work, and giving them
assignments. The website allows us to create assignment for the class on the
website and send it to them. This feature allows us to provide instructions and
not have to worry about students losing the directions. The assignment section
allows us to include a picture or video explanation as well. Therefore, we can
provide specific details on a tutorial video to help students fully understand
what they are supposed to do. The
students will be able to access the assignment anywhere as long as internet
connection is available. The internet
based assignment also allows for easy access to grading the assignments. These
assignments don’t have the chance to be lost during the grading period.
1.
The
Benefits of Using Storybird to Teach Writing
Storybird
has numerous benefits when it is applied in learning context. The first benefit
is it can develop students’ cooperative learning skills. When working with
Storybird, students create, elaborate and work with each other to select the
topic, conduct a research, write a script, and develop the story. Moreover,
different groups of students can provide their own stories and use a jigsaw to
support the whole learning chapter of the subject. This
allows anyone to make and publish different types of writing. It allows us to
create our own piece of writing and to read others work, respond to pieces of
writing, and even to purchase some stories. Furthermore, a broad variety of people
are able to come together as a community of writers and illustrators. The
commenting features provide an interaction for writers and illustrator in
having collaboration on their work.
The second benefit includes the
increased student motivation by assigning them to create personal stories. Motivating
students to produce quality pieces of writing might be quite challenging.
Surprisingly, by utilizing Storybird in the classroom, students are motivated
to start writing because it provides the opportunity to personalize a story
that has deep individual meaning (Sadik, 2008). By providing students the
opportunity to choose a personally meaningful story to work with, some unique
dimensions are emerging. This strategy allows students to express themselves,
their sense of humor, and understanding of the world in a new manner (Hull,
2006). Moreover, utilizing Storybird can be beneficial not only for students
who like to write, but also for struggling writers. Many educators find it
challenging to meet the needs of struggling writers and to encourage them to
write. The use of Storybird within the classroom context has proven to engage
the struggling writers who have not yet experienced the power of personal
expression (Bull &Kajder, 2004). Ultimately, as stated by Hull (2006),
through Storybird, students become more conscious of and confident in telling
stories that will hold the attention of the audience. Students whose pieces of
writing are lack of details or creativity will emerge with digital stories that
display their writing skills.
In addition to the
increased student motivation, Storybird allows students to practice their
writing skills in the context of technology. Consequently,
students become more confident and effective in using this medium of learning. As
mentioned by Sadik (2008), numerous studies show that students develop their
technical skills through both the planning stage and the transformation of
their ideas to the digital format. Moreover, by working with various software
programs, students gain expertise in digital world and become peer tutors. The
digital technology, then, allows them to control how to use the technology and
gives them learning autonomy.
For teachers, Storybird is easy to use because it
requires minimal preparation and allows them to create individual user accounts
for students (Menezes, 2012). The students’ individual account enables teachers
to view and check all story books that students are making. In addition,
Storybird is a collaborative learning tool which enables students to work with other
students in their school or from different school in the region or even from
another country. Storybird can also be used as a way to collaborate between
parents and child. Several experiments were made in USA in order to bridge home
and school by assigning students to work with their parents to create stories
(Menezes, 2012).
Finally, Storybird not only allows students to
improve their writing, but also improves their peer tutor skills. The
opportunity for peer teaching exists in many areas of the classroom, but
Storybird provides students greater and sustained opportunity to engage in peer
tutoring. Students tend to imitate the class interactions built by their
teacher and use these ideas to assist others. In addition, peer tutoring builds
and enhances students’ self-confidence (Hull & Katz, 2006). Both students
who like to write and struggling students participate in peer tutoring for
their classmates. This peer tutoring is done in the forms of giving advice on
which images seem best suited with the story, helping in troubleshooting
computer problems, and correcting grammatical forms or patterns.
2.
The
Limitations of Using Storybird
Storybird provides both the students and
teacher some advantages in using it within the classroom context. However, it
has some limitations in its application. The first limitation is it requires
stable and fast internet connection, Storybird as a one of digital storytelling
website providing various vivid artworks from numerous artists contains images with
big resolutions which require stable and fast internet connection to load. Moreover,
stable and fast internet connection will be needed in the transition from one
feature to another feature in Storybird. Secondly, an e-mail address is
required for a new user who signs up for the first time. Even though Storybird
is a free digital storytelling website, it has an e-mail confirmation sign-up,
which may be challenging issue for the teachers to use with young learners if
they do not have e-mail accounts which can be accessed at school. Thirdly, the
numerous artwork provided by the artists are limited in numbers, students are
allowed to choose pictures for a single illustrator for a book which limits the
illustration of their story.
The major limitation of using Story bird
especially for young learners is it has no obvious filter which might lead the
students to be able to view potentially inappropriate materials. In addition, Story
bird does not comply with Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) regulation
which is necessary when dealing with swearing, cyber bullying, and/ or
inappropriate materials viewing. However, according to Flaherty (2011),
Storybird developers have assured users that Storybird is screened in advance
to ensure it does not contain inappropriate materials and it is child
appropriate.
Consequently, by acknowledging the
limitations in using Storybird to teach writing class, teachers will get some
benefits. Firstly, the teachers will be able to anticipate the limitations by finding
out some strategies to overcome those limitations before implementing Story bird
in the classroom. Secondly, teachers will be able to provide some alternative ways
to minimize the limitations and maximize the benefits achieved by using it inthe
classroom.
3.
The
Possibilities of Using Story bird
Story
bird as a digital storytelling website provides opportunities for the students
to create their own stories and engage in the whole process of publishing the
story online. This website allows students to develop their motivation,
interest, skills in writing as well as to be a creative story writer. Storybird
can be implemented within various educational contexts: private lessons,
elementary, junior and senior high school, under-graduate program, general
English lessons, as well as in an ESP class. The following paragraphs are going
to exemplify possibilities in using Storybird within educational context.
Building
form the Colombia government policies and regulations concerning bilingualism
which includes the communicative standards required to be a competent user of
English of foreign language, higher educational institutions and universities
in Colombia offer general and academic English program for the learners to
achieve upper-intermediate level of advanced level of English language
proficiency. According to Ramirez (2013),Instituto de Lenguas Universidad
Distrital (ILUD) as one of educational institutions in Colombia supports and
trains students who are interested in improving their English proficiency and
achieving an upper-intermediate level of proficiency.
Regarding
the limitations the students encounter in doing the writing tasks on the
English proficiency test, a different strategy is conducted to help the students
improve their writing skills. As a result, ILUD adopts a new pedagogical
treatment concerning these limitations which is focused on the creation of
stories using the Collaborative Writing (CW) strategies and the use of
Storybird within the learning environment in and/ or out of the classroom. The
students enrolled in the General English proficiency program at ILUD Bogota,
Colombia were the participants of this pedagogical treatment. The students
attending the two-month course levels were members of diverse social status
levels, public and private universities, schools and institutions. These
students were English learners who needed to pass the proficiency English test
as graduation requirement to get a job and/ or get an international
certificate. The students attended face-to-face sessions two hours a week
because of their career, jobs, families, and the time they could spend to
attend the courses was limited (Ramirez, 2013).
According
to Ramirez (2013) in his research report, ILUD adopted the use of Storybird to
teach narrative texts to students who needed to pass the proficiency English
test. The class was conducted both in face-to-face sessions and online sessions
which covered the four cycles in writing process proposed by Harmer (as cited
in Ramirez, 2013): (a) pre-writing, (b) drafting, (c) revising, and (d)
editing. The instruction for writing was given on the first week in face to
face session, while the pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and giving
feedback and reinforcement were done in online mode with Storybird. In
pre-writing step, students decided the topic for the story, dragged and
arranged the images they would probably use on Storybird, and made the
introduction, problems and resolution in the story. When students finished
writing their stories, the teacher held face-to-face session to deliver
feedback and reinforcement. At that point, the students revised, edited,
finalized, and published their work onto Storybird.
The
second possibility on using Storybird to teach writing is exemplified in a case
study on investigate the implementation of Storybird for promoting students’
writing skills in an English as a foreign language classroom conducted by
Dollar et al. (n.d.). The study was conducted in the fifth grade class of EFL
students in a foundation primary school in Turkey. All of the students were
familiar with the use of technology in the teaching learning process and
started to learn English at the age of five. Storybird was introduced and
taught on the first week. The teacher created the classroom on Storybird and
distributed the password to the students so they could join the class group and
share their stories. The students, then, were given two weeks to complete their
digital stories on Storybird.
The
results of the study show that Storybird as a digital storytelling website can
easily be incorporated into a curriculum, especially for ‘writing for fluency’.
Regarding to the fact that writing is the most difficult skill to be acquired
by EFL students, and teachers often struggle to get the students to write,
using Storybird may bring solution to these problems. From the data gathered by
the researcher, it shows that the students’ writing were longer and were better
in quality in terms of the discourse, language, and creativity.
4.
CONCLUSION
Digital storytelling is a form of communication in
which students apply critical thinking skills while selecting the appropriate
media to convey the story’s message to the audience. It provides the student
with a learning environment to improve students’ writing skills, apply
communication skills, work collaboratively, and think critically while
addressing content of the stories and technology being used.Storybird is one of
digital storytelling websites which can be used to teach writing throughout
some stages in writing process. As stated by Frazel (as cited in Hack and
Helwa, 2014), writing stages in Storybird include preparation, production, and
presentation. Each stage in writing process in Storybirdadopts the process
approach to writing instruction proposed by Shih (as cited in Brown, 2001)
which puts the emphasize on both process and product.
As Storybird is incorporated in teaching
writing, it has numerous benefits. The first benefit is it can develop
students’ cooperative learning skills. The second benefit includes the
increased student motivation by assigning them to create personal stories.
personal expression (Bull &Kajder, 2004). The next benefit is Storybird allows students to practice their
writing skills in the context of technology. In addition, for teachers,
Storybird is easy to use because it requires minimal preparation and allows
them to create individual user accounts for students (Menezes, 2012). Lastly, Storybird
improves students’ peer tutor skills.
However, Storybird has some limitations
in its implementation in teaching writing. The limitations are it requires
stable and fast internet connection, it requires an e-mail address for a new
user who signs up for the first time, it has limited artwork, and it has no
obvious filter which might lead the students to be able to view potentially
inappropriate materials. Thus, having acknowledged the limitations in using
Storybird to teach writing class, teachers will be able to maximize the
benefits achieved by using it in the classroom.
Consequently, the use
of Storybird to teach writing is very practical and beneficial for both students
and teachers. Teachers may implement Storybird within various educational
contexts and levels. Some possibilities to incorporate Storybird in writing
class are: it can be implemented to teach narrative writing for EFL students
and it can be incorporated into the curriculum to teach writing for EFL
students. Therefore, by knowing the benefits, limitations,
and possibilities to implement Storybird in teaching writing, English teachers
in Indonesia may adopt the same strategies in implementing Storybird within
English curriculum.
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