Here is the link to my updated spreadsheet comparing some storytelling apps. I've added 3 more apps since the last version (highlighted.) Apps included in the comparison are:
Our Story
Pictello
SodaSnap Postcards
SonicPics and SonicPics Lite
StoryKit
StoryPatch
StoryRobe
StoryMaker
StoryPages
All are obviously intended for the creation of stories, but the final products vary from a single page with images and text, to multipage stories with images and text and audio, to a video that is basically a narrated slideshow.
Visit my Storytelling page for a quick overview of all these apps as well as several animated storytelling apps. My side-by-side comparison of the animated storytelling apps is on a separate spreadsheet.
All are obviously intended for the creation of stories, but the final products vary from a single page with images and text, to multipage stories with images, text and audio, to a video that is basically a narrated slideshow.
SonicPics is another app that lets you create digital stories with pictures, sound, and (with a little thought and another app) some text too. Here's a quick overview:
A more detailed tutorial:
4/7/11 ETA: SonicPics Lite, which is free, limits you to only 3 pictures in a video, but as Apple employee Jim Moulton pointed out at a conference today, this is not necessarily a problem. Three pictures (and 10 minutes of recording time) is enough for a story with a beginning, a middle and an end!
2/6/12 ETA - SonicPics Lite is no longer available.
I mentioned Tony Vincent's website Learning in Hand in my first post on this blog. If you haven't visited it, you're really missing out. I've been working on blogposts about digital storytelling, and then what do I find but this video from Tony:
It's a presentation he put together for the k12 Online Conference 2010. I've already written posts about using StoryKit and StoryRobe. I was going to go on to post about how you can make further tweaks to the images you use in your stories by using apps like Comic Touch. Tony's video looks at how you can use a similar storytelling app - SonicPics - AND includes info on how you can use Comic Touch and other apps to edit the images you include in your stories. He also goes far beyond mere recommendations of software to use, putting it in a solid pedagogical context. He's also realistic, commenting that "because it's annoying to switch between apps, many [students] will want to write their notes on paper."
Note that not all the apps he recommends are free and some of the applications he recommends are only available for the iPad. Here's the second half of the video on project based learning or, for those of you like me who'd rather read, here's the article he wrote that covers the same ground. (At the end of the article on project based learning he mentions that, at the time he wrote the article, the total cost of the apps he listed was US$375! I was stunned at that, given that so many apps for the iPod cost no more than a few dollars! Tony pointed out in the comments to this post that the widget he used miscalculated and the cost was more like $15.)
