iOS books for older struggling readers

Carisa, over at The Digital Media Diet, has written a great article on iPad books for older & struggling Readers Ages 10 and up. As she comes across new books she will add them to her blogpost.

iPad books

I posted a link a while ago to a guide to buying digital books for kids. The movie Cars 2 is about to be released tomorrow and Disney has already released an app to go with it. The app is an enhanced book. It has some of the features that you'd want in a digital book - first and foremost, it's high interest! You can listen to the story being read to you - and of course the reading is very professional. This is Disney, after all, and they are very good at what they do! Watching Maggie's review of it, over at apps for iPads, I was wondering whether this would be an appropriate app to use in school. It certainly has nice features - like highlighting the text as it is read aloud - but I can see kids choosing to listen and look at the pictures, while completely ignoring the text. Fortunately, there is also a feature that allows kid to record themselves reading the text. That could be very useful as a way of checking to make sure that a child told to go and read to him/herself has actually done so. (Of course, reading to yourself and reading aloud could be considered different skills!)  Using an iPad2 to project this story might hold some kids' attention better than a teacher reading aloud - the pictures will be easier to see and there is the bonus of the sound effects and animation which might make it a little easier for  English language learner (ELL) students to understand some parts of the story. This storybook is bound to be much simpler than the actual movie, and this again is helpful for the ELL students. There are some fun games for the kids to play - though I suspect that some of the puzzles and activities may be too simple in comparison to the reading level of the text. Coloring (especially when the app can be set to choose all the colors for you so the finished product is 'perfect') and tossing tires, while good fine motor skills activities are not necessarily developmentally appropriate for  a kid who can read at this level. And kids who can't read at this level (actually, even those who can) will want to spend their time playing the games instead of reading along with the text . . .

The app is currently being sold for 'just' $5.99, instead of the regular price of $8.99. Compared to the cost of a book, and given the extra features, it is perhaps not unreasonable. However, given the logistics of buying one copy of a book like this and then figuring out how to make it available to kids, I don't think schools are going to go for it. We're looking at having 30 iPads per grade level, K-2, next year. Realistically, we could not afford to buy 30 copies of a book unless it was a significant part of the curriculum, so it is more likely that we would want only one or two copies of an app like this, just as we would want only one or two copies of a particular hard-bound book for the library. If this book were on only one of those iPads, it could be a real pain trying to direct kids to use the specific iPad it was on.

I'd love to have this app available on an iPad for something like indoor recess time, or our before  and after school program and kids will love to have this on their own iPad, but I see other priorities for school money right now!

Storytelling apps compared - update

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. 

Storytelling with Our Story

The free app Our Story was developed by child psychologists and education specialists at the Open University in the UK. The app is backed by solid research and the website is worth checking out as it offers suggestions for ways to use the app that are equally appropriate to other storytelling apps. 

"Reading, even in the digital age, is probably one of the most important skills that children acquire. It can be an important source of pleasure which also develops vital language and social skills. It is fundamental to most school activities, it can also open up new worlds and give access to the wealth of human knowledge. 

This app that has been developed by child psychologists and other specialists at The Open University enables young children to take part in fun games which can help develop interests and skills that will be relevant to them when they start to read." 

The app and its support pages are very clearly geared towards parents using the app with their children rather than teachers using it in the classroom. 

Some of the nice features - 

• you can create a selection of images from your photo album that you want students to use directly in the app. You can also add more photos as needed from the photo album. 
• You can add text to each image, and the text is saved so that you can reuse it if you use the same image in another story. 
• You can add a recording to each image. 
• The images are large because there is no screen real estate saved for the text - it goes over the image. 
• You can easily see how many images you have in your story and what order they are in. 
• You can use images one at a time, like flashcards, without adding them to your story. 
• You can see the text as you are recording. (It is not hidden by a recording window as it is in StoryKit for example.) 
• Text boxes are scrollable.
• It's free and there is no advertising! 

Some drawbacks - 

• You are limited to creating 10 stories. After that, if you want to create more you have to choose which of the stories you've already created you want to overwrite. 
• The app has quit on me several times as I was trying to create a story. 
• You cannot move the text boxes on the screen and they often end up obscuring part of the picture. You can double-tap on the page and the text and navigation tools will disappear. They reappear when you double-tap again. 
• Navigation is not terribly intuitive - I'm not sure that young kids could figure how to navigate back to a saved story - certainly not as easily as they could in StoryKit for example. 
• When you are 'using' a story, the icon to play audio shows up on every picture even when there is no associated audio. 
• There is no way to share the stories beyond the iDevice they're on, with the exception perhaps of an iPad2 hooked up to a projector! 

This app has some nice features and, given that it's free, it's worth the download. The inability to share the final product is a dealbreaker for me right now though in terms of using it with my ESL students. I can see uses for Our Story for social stories though - especially given the ease of adding images using the camera in a 4th generation iPod or iPad2 - and also for other adult-created stories or activities. If using the story right on the iDevice where it was created suits you, then this provides a nice alternative to other apps and can provide some variety in the look of the apps you are using. 

Kids' book apps

If you're interested in finding good storybook apps for young readers, I recommend starting with this article Planet App: Kids' book apps are everywhere. But are they any good? by Elizabeth Bird from School Library Journal. It starts with some suggestions as to things to look for in a storybook app, and then moves on to examine some books using those criteria.

One of the most important questions she asks is, "What does the app provide that a simple lapsit with a print book and an adult does not?" This a pertinent question to ask about most apps. What is the value in having a student use the app as opposed to working some other way? If there is no real advantage, then why use the app? If the app could be replaced by an audio recording  and a copy of the book, then what's the point?

Bird sees some valuable qualities in storybook apps, but of course not all apps are equally good! Her article will help you think critically about the free samples you can download from companies like Rye Studio, Loud Crow, and many others. Note that the free storybooks are often limited in some way. They are usually free only to give you a taste of what the full version is like, so you can 'try before you buy' and sometimes, but not always,  include the word 'Lite' in the title to alert you to that fact.  Read the description carefully to find out what is missing. If it's an interactive feature, then you may find the app still usable. Sometimes, however, it's the last page or two of the story!