Web 2.0 Tool: Little Bird Tales

A little bird told me that there was a digital storytelling tool that allows you to create original videos using voice recording, text, and images and allows you to share them with others.  The tool is called Little Bird Tales.  Once you arrive at the main page, click on the center image of a bluebird to get an overview of how you can create your own tale.  Click Here  to find out how a cranky and technologically challenged person such as myself would create an account and use Little Bird Tales in my classroom.  As a test, my own children and I used it to create a really cute story of our summer vacation to the Smoky Mountains, and they truly enjoyed it.

Now that you have an overview of the Little Bird Tales tool, and you know how to sign up, let me tell you about two of my favorite features of this tool.  The first is that you can either upload your own images (such as photos) from your own computer to illustrate your story.  You can also draw your own images within the tool.  I think the drawing feature would be particularly interesting to students.  Once you save the image, it will add it to your tale.  Then you an exit out of the image screen to add your voice and/or text to tell that portion of your tale.  Each time you add a new image, you get an opportunity to add to the next part of your tale.

The next wonderful feature that I think Little Bird Tales has is that it allows you to share your tale in several ways.  Once you have created your tale, at the top of the screen it has a prompt that says "Go To..".  Click on that, then click on "My Tales".  It will pull up your tale.  You have two choices: embed or more options.  You would use "embed" to share in your blog or on Facebook.  If you click on "more options", you can either share, copy, create a PDF, or delete your tale.  If you choose "PDF", then it will create a PDF file of the images and text from your story that you can print out for your students to take home (or to put in their file).  Instant permanent product.  If you choose share, it will automatically pop up a window to send an e-mail to whomever you think would want to see the tale, such as a student's parent. In our case, we sent it to grandma.

There are many pre-made templates that you can use to help you create tales to assist you in teaching in the classroom.  Hopefully, you can imagine all the great possibilities that Little Bird Tales could have for your primary classroom.  My little birds certainly enjoyed creating their own tale (warning: everything on Little Bird Tales takes at least 30 seconds to load, so it's not broken, just be patient).