Create your OWN story!
I believe everyone has a nice story to tell, just like Jamie and his mummy in my story. With the advent of iPads and other tablet devices, the stories we live can be turned into audio/visual/text-forms and shared with anyone across the world. There are various apps which allow you to do this, some work better than others, some are free, some are not. Below, I describe Our Story which was co-developed with my colleagues at the Open University to enable parents, teachers and young children to create their own multimodal stories on iPads, iphones and android devices.
Our Story
Our Story was one of the first children’s story tablet-making applications on the market. The app allows text, picture and audio-integration and was designed with young story-authors in mind, with an iconic, rather than text-based navigation. The user interface was developed to support many literacy-promoting skills, including sound-text correspondence and story sequencing (see the filmstrip at the bottom of the app). Our goal was to promote not only individual story-making but also the importance of story-sharing, hence the name “our” story.
Our Story was released as an iphone app in July 2011 and since its launch, has been used for various research projects, teaching and non-profit purposes. The app enjoys great popularity among early years professionals and parents across the world. You can read more about the various projects and activities here.
Our Story is freely available on the Apple store (as an iPhone and iPad version) and android market. We are looking for ways for improving the eisting version so please send us your feedback if you discover bugs or if you would like us to include new features in the next version.
The screen shots below are taken from the app iPhone version.
