June 2010

Rebecca Dautremer recently caught our eye with her lush colors and strong camera angles. Like Janice Nadeau, who we featured a few days ago, Dautremer is French. But the former hails from Quebec while the latter is from France. At first blush, I would have thought the reverse, given how Nadeau’s whimsical art deco style conjures up an easy cliché of France while Dautremer’s aggressive palette and POV seems younger and more suitably Quebecois. I’d hesitate to say this to them personally, though. France and Quebec are as similar as Scotland and Ireland, and their residents are equally bothered by mixing up origins and influences.

Apricot is a bit self-conscious, but the love and tenderness of this short film—both in the story and production—is winning. Steal 10 minutes: close the door, go full screen, and turn up the sound. You’ll be glad you did.

Art deco pixie dust is sprinkled throughout the work of French artist Janice Nadeau.

Writer, teacher, and librarian Pat Ezell (aka wirelesslibrarian) attracted our attention with several charming Storybirds about mice, pigs, and talking trees. Given her pedigree, we asked her about the social side of writing and the influence of feedback on emerging writers.

Ernest Hemingway got up early in the morning so he could write in quiet. Truman Capote swore that he did all his writing lying down, crafting his stories either in bed or on the couch. Shakespeare would shut himself away in his chambers for days at a time when he was writing. Okay, I totally made up the bit about Shakespeare, but it sounds plausible, right? Writing has typically been thought of as a solitary and frequently clandestine endeavor.  But is lonely writing the only good kind?

When I was in third grade, my teacher chose to “publish” a story I had written, thanks to the purple magic of the mimeograph machine. Yeah, I’m kind of ancient. Anyway,  everyone in Mrs. Hall’s class got a fragrant, violet-inked copy of my masterpiece, and the whole experience was very powerful for me. Because my teacher saw value in my writing, I began to see myself as a writer. It made me want to write more, to write better, to create the most amazing stories ever read. That’s what a little bit of encouragement can do for you, and I think that writing in and for a collaborative community like Storybird can nurture the same desire to be a writer that Mrs. Hall instilled in me.

The world is seemingly a very different place today. Shakespeare and Hemingway and Capote did not have such a broad sounding board as we now enjoy, but I suspect that authors have always looked for affirmation and guidance. Jane Austen always read her work to her sister first. Rick Riordan shared The Lightning Thief with his nine-year-old son and then tried it out with his middle school students before he submitted it for publication. Stephen King always shares his first drafts with the grave digger at a local cemetery. Umm, that part about Stephen King is complete fabrication, but it sounds right, doesn’t it? The point is that maybe authorship isn’t done best in isolation. Maybe being able to connect with others to share our writing can make us better writers. With Storybird and other forms of social media at our fingertips, we’ve just got a bigger family to bounce things off of.

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Image: Fancy Fish by Victoria Usova

Cover, end paper, and bookplate design by Sara Wood and Bobby O’Herlihy for an assignment by typographic illustrator Jessica Hische.

Tyler pointed us to these German cigarette vending machines that are refurbished to sell paperbacks (Kaye wonders if they’ll smell of tobacco). The same day—the same day!—we came across the British DoodleVend, an eclectic booth where designers doodle on party favorites while-u-wait.

The Germans and the British are clever. But odd.

We’re all about the letters here at Storybird. That’s why we’re spreading the love for Hexagonal’s Wes Anderson Alphabet.

Recently, U.S. teachers Karen Ditzler and Jamielynn Griffith used Skype and Storybird to connect their classes through collaborative storytelling. After we read their story and various tweets about the project, we invited Karen to blog about how things went down and their surprise ending.

Storybird is one of my favorite tools for digital storytelling. So when a member of my PLN, Jamielynn Griffith, and I were discussing how to connect classes for a project, we decided Storybird was the perfect tool.

We connected two small reading groups (4-5 students). I worked with Mrs. Plever’s second grade group in Pennsylvania and Mrs. Griffith’s group was in New York.

First we allowed the students to meet via Skype. During this conference, the students introduced themselves and the teachers explained the task. The assignment was to write a collaborative story using Storybird. We shared our screen so that the students could browse through the pictures together and choose a collection of artwork. They chose artwork done by a wonderful artist, Andy McNally. Mrs. Plever’s class worked together to write the beginning. Then they passed it on to Mrs. Griffith’s class. The students read what was written and added to it. The story was passed back and forth six times.

While the students worked on the story, they focused on word choice, sequencing, and story elements. Then the students met for another Skype conference. They discussed the twists and turns of the story, wrote the ending together and gave the story a title Mr. Bobblehead’s New Gadget and the Valentine’s Surprise.

Mr. Bobblehead’s New Gadget and the Valentine’s Surprise on Storybird

We were so proud of their work that we posted their story on Twitter. We were pleasantly surprised when Andy McNally commented on the story and contacted us. He is a talented artist and was honored that the students chose his artwork for their story. His art inspired our students to write a great story and our students’ story inspired him to create another piece of artwork. He sent each class an original piece of his artwork. He also reflected on how he created it in his blog. Mr. McNally graciously met with both classes through Skype. He spent time talking with the students about his life and inspiration and what he does as an artist. They had many questions for him. He was so wonderful with the students!

We have connected many other classes since then to create Storybirds together. It is a valuable experience for the students and it raises their level of motivation to write!

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Karen Ditzler is an Instructional Integration Advisor with West Shore School District in Pennsylvania, USA. You’ll find her on Twitter, Skype (karenditzler), and Wikispaces.

[Editor's note: if you're a teacher and using Storybird, you'll be happy to know we're soft-launching Class accounts. We haven't put up a landing page or video FAQ, but you can hop in and start playing today. We'll have a blog post up on this shortly.]