Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Story Builder App - Review



Story Builder is designed to help children infer ideas, integrate ideas and form paragraphs. It offers a rich platform for young children to be creative as they improve their speech and auditory processing. According to the site - the app has been shown to assist young ones with autism spectrum disorder and sensory processing disorders.


As I observed my 6 year old become acquainted with the app, I could see where it could be quite useful for those with special needs . Spence needed a bit of coaching to get started with Story Builder - but he quickly got the hang of it. 


It helped for me to ask additional questions about the picture and assure him there were no "right" or "wrong" answers. Once he figured out that it was up to him to make up any story he wanted - he began to use his imagination and answered the questions from Story Builder with much more confidence. 


  


See the grin on his face? He was pretty pleased with himself as he learned to manage the App himself. Listening to his very own narrative of the story he created was good for his self esteem. Spence has had his own special needs to overcome and I look for ways to build his self esteem. I also look for ways to keep him occupied when I am busy with other tasks - and now that he an operate Story Apps on his own - we have a winning combination! 

Features: 

  • Record feature allows students to record narrative in their own voice
  • 3 levels of play
  • Simple and intuitive interface to record narrative
  • Recorded answers are stitched together to create complete narrative
  • 50 distinct story lines to create narratives from
  • Over 500 audio clips of questions to guide narrative
  • Optional question text and answer introduction reinforcement
Story Builder was voted Best Reading App of 2011 - by the Huffington Post.
 It can be used on your ipad, iphone, or ipod touch. We used the iphone 3 without any problems. You can get it for your ipod or iphone here or the ipad app here. 

Screen Shot from the iphone: 

iPhone Screenshot 1

The Story Builder App is a wonderfully creative way to encourage story telling for your children. It does more than simply replay a story. It teaches them to connect the pictures with their thoughts, and shows them how to stream and organize their thoughts to tell an exciting story. Mostly, I loved seeing the pleased expression on the face of my little boy. 


*This review was done for The Old Schoolhouse Review Team - I received the app free to use with my children 
the opinions are my own - I only review products I feel are valuable for my family and my readers 

4 comments:

Tonya said...

My Josh would love that! I only wish we had an Apple product to download it on! Working on that...

Unknown said...

That sounds like a really cool one. My daughter loves making up her own stories. Thanks for sharing!

Pamela said...

My grands love playing with my phone. They will love this one. One of the blessings of the blog world is finding new products that normally I'd never know about. That adorable face just makes me smile!

Unknown said...

awww Thank you Pamela - He just grins like crazy when he hears his own voice played back to him!

Tonya- yes! love the Apple products

Janine - I'll have to check out your blog! :)

thanks for visiting ladies!