Storyjumper: Let’s Create our Own Story!

Introduction

Probably there may not be anyone amongst us who hates stories. The difference can be, some may like happy stories and some other may adore thrilling stories, or it may be that some like short stories and some other may like the long fiction. So since stories are loved by everyone, it’s essentially a good idea to bring stories in language classroom too. And for that Storyjumper, the web tool that I am going to deal today, can be a big help which allows us to create a type of short story for the young learners. As regards story, Walker and White (2013) claims, ‘Stories present language in context, often mixing narrative and dialogue and, although they are often delivered orally, they may also be written so can allow practice of all four skills’. Indeed, stories can be the great language learning tools for young learners as they can learn some focused expressions in a dialogue presented in a repetitive way. They can also be exposed to vocabulary in context. Stories can also be employed in the language classroom to make the learners infer or make a hunch by asking them what might happen next after each plot. This activity can be helpful to develop their critical thinking and to elicit creative responses.

The tool, Storyjumper is an amazing authoring tool as it allows us to create story from either scratch or using some stories on stack. For that, we need to create an account. Once we have created an account, on our left in the screen, we will see text box, images and props icons. We can drag them and drop to the pages. We can dedicate pages, add our own illustrations and design a story. So the vocabulary and some grammatical points or language exponents we are focusing can be put in a form of story adding our own illustrations. It may take us quite a long time if we are making a story for the first time. This is because we need to be familiar with some technical stuff and at the same time, be creative to create a story. Nevertheless, once we have done successfully, the next time will be relatively short time to create the desired story. Those stories that we come up with can be used in our own class to make learners discuss the characters involved in the story, the sequence of events mentioned and ending of the story. We might ask them what might happen next which is to elicit their critical thinking.

Next, we may also engage the learners to create their own stories. Intriguingly, they will be more creative enough to produce their own kind. What we might require is to create a kind of rubrics that delineates length, number of illustrations, etc., and their work can finally be published in the story jumper cloud technology. If a little sum is pain, digital copy of the story without Storyjumper watermark can be produced. Or if parents want to gift their story book to their children, they can order a hardcopy from a Storyjumper. A number of possible options!

How to Create?

Here’s a tutorial of Storyjumper. Hopefully it would help create a story.

And here’s a story that I have created through Storyjumper.

Read this free book made on StoryJumper

Every tool has advantages and disadvantages. Now let me list the advantages and disadvantages of Storyjumper below.

Advantages

1.    It has an option to create a beautiful story from the very scratch or through some kind of adaptation to the ones they are already in the stack of Storyjumper.

2.    The illustrations like pictures and props can be easily added to the story we are going to create from the inventory of Storyjumper or from our own PC storage.

3.    It is easy to create, and mostly the stories we create can be appealing to the young learners as it has young-learners-friendly template.

4.    Once the story is completed, we can either publish for free or order the printed copy paying little sum. So publication at the young age can be another opportunity and they may be more motivated finding their work published.

5.    The output of the stories is really elegant in design.

6.  A story writing project involving young learners can be equally gripping project through Storyjumper. It may be organized in the form of competition as well.

7.    In a very short span of time, teachers can create their own stories focusing on some language forms or functions that they are planning to teach. So it can be the natural, contextual and level appropriate teaching learning resources.

8.    There is also an option to produce story in a collaborative way by inviting another contributor through email. So a collaborative writing can be practised through this tool.

Disadvantages

1.  We can only use limited words in each leaf of the story and it is auto-saved as landscape which cannot be changed into the portrait. There is no option to change the design if we desire to change it.

2.    It needs additional payment in case we want a book to be published as a digital copy without a watermark.

3.  The ‘polished output of electronic books’ (Walker and White, 2013: p 120) might cause learners to feel that the handmade version is not going to be good enough. As a result, the learners may be obsessed with the print version of their every product later on.

References

Walker, A. & White, G. (2013). Technology enhanced language teaching: Connecting theory and practice. Oxford: OUP.