Cool Tool Review - Storyboardthat.com

Storyboard

The tool I chose to try out is a site called, storyboardthat.com. The reason I chose this is because you can set up a comic type of storyboard to create presentations for classes for your students, or the students can do them themselves. Some of the examples shown on the site have to do with a summary of a book read for an English class, or a time period in History, and even Greek Mythology.

 As I kept inspecting the site, I saw there was a Special Education section. Special Education is my major, so I am pretty pumped about this! I am also an Education Aide for students with special needs so this site gave me some inspiration. 

A teacher on the website gave an idea of making a, "First, Then" storyboard for students with special needs. In this way, the students can get a visual of the mapping of their day instead of just hearing their teacher tell them. Many of these types of students need to stick to their routine because if the routine is broken, that is when the meltdowns happen. Believe me, I got a chunk of my hair ripped out on Friday because a student's routine was thrown off. It happens. BUT, this tool will give them a constant visual reminder of what the day will look like.

My first thought for using this was for one of my non-verbal students. He seems to understand visual prompts and auditory prompts for the most part but this could continue to help him get a better understanding as time goes on. Here is an example:

Yes this example is simple, but keep in mind I made this with one of my severely intellectually disabled students. Three simple steps could give him the full concept of the day.

Higher functioning students would be able to make their own and make the storyboard longer. They would not need it to only map out their day but could create a summary of what they had learned in class on a particular topic. This would allow the student to go beyond the assignment and use their creativity as well. This enhances the fun of this tool but would also challenge them to make a presentation in away that the students and teacher would understand in an organized fashion.

There are many different backgrounds, characters, themes, and scenarios you or your student could create. The site has a great instructional video on how to get started and the video does a wonderful job of how to create different scenarios with ease.

I used the free 14 day trial, so this does cost some money if you were to continue using this. The cost for a teacher is $9.95 a month, $19.95 Quarterly, and $59.95 for an entire year. And of course the school you are working for should be able to pay for the cost.

Students would need to be supplied with the right technology tools to accomplish this. Computers and iPads would be ideal. It would be awesome to have enough of these resources for each student so that they could work together and the teacher can give a great visual step by step direction on how to use this tool.

Here are a couple of links for this site: 

http://www.storyboardthat.com/

https://www.storyboardthat.com/portal/storyboards/mspontwookie/class-storyboard/first--then/copy